Avoiding the blue screen of death

[BigShow]

Hey,

So my wife and i bought laptops around the same time as each other about 3 years ago. She got a HP and i got an Acer. She spent £300 and i spent £600,

Last year her laptop started to get the dreaded BSOD and eventually it refused to boot. It powers up, the lights twinkle and the fan runs but the screen is lifeless.

Never mind, she can borrow mine.

Last week the exact same thing has started happening to mine. BSOD, rebooting cycles, dead screens and now it's doing the exact same as her's. It boots, lights up, fan runs but it's dead.

THEN i asked my brother if i could borrow his old one, so he boots it up to "back up some files" i.e. delete browsing history. And it gets a blue screen of death!!! I asked him how old it was and he said 3 years!

So are laptops designed to last a maximum of 3 years now before initiating self-destruct? I now have to buy a new one, are there any brands out there that are reputed to not get the BSOD so often?

TL:DR Any laptop brands out there that are less susceptible to the blue screen of death?

[stinkwheel]

Depends what's causing it. BSOD happens when windows crashes for some reason. Mainly you need to find if you have a hardware or a software problem. There may be nothing wrong with the laptop itself.

You say you're getting a blank screen but you also say it boots. Which is it? How far does it get?

If it's booting past the BIOS screen, I'd Try a linux live cd/flash drive and see if it'll boot into that. Mint is easy to use but I like using puppy for recovery because it'll run on almost anything and doesn't need a working hard drive.
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[doggone]

Even with heavy use you can expect more than three years, but by then the battery will be close to falling over.
My last one did four years - on for several hours most days - then I gave it to someone else a couple of months ago and still seems OK.

It runs much hotter as it got older - that is the main enemy of them -almost unavoidable slow death by dust.

[P.]

Install Linux Mint, you'll avoid the blue screen for sure

[chris-red]

I have a Dell Mini 10 that is still going 6 years on...
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[CBFcarl]

I have had a Samsung R519 for about 4 1/2 years now, and although the battery doesnt seem to hold a long term charge, it has never had a bsod, and it gets used for everything, gaming, downloading, browsing and streaming. Having said that, every couple of months I go through the system and remove all unwanted software and generally look after the thing, it still runs almost as good as when I first got it.
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[iooi]

If you google the HP laptop and what is wrong you will often find the cure.

My HP did this a couple of time's.
A search brought up how to resolve and get it to boot up OK.

Try taking battery out, no power lead and holding down the power button for 15 sec's. Then power up again.

And that was a 6 year old DV6. Sadly now dead as the processer fried itself...
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[doggone]

[BigShow]

[BigShow]

[Clutchy]

To fully write off the screen (which I had to do on my 13 month ~£400 laptop) I plugged it into a screen via vga or hdmi and it showed up without any issues, where as the laptop was blank.


Worth checking I suppose.
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[CBFcarl]

[BigShow]

Thanks for the advice guys.

Ive got a few things to try out later on now before i give up and introduce it to a hammer.

[lihp]

Why do people have so many problems with Windows?

I have never seemed to have any issues with crashing or instability on any Windows OS that I have used, both present and in the past.

I assume people kill it by downloading and filling their computer with shit.
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[Andy_Pagin]

Burn a Linux live DVD, Fedora is good for this purpose, then try booting from the DVD, if it boots up to a usable desktop then the problems Windows related. Also I think Fedora-Live has a memory & whatnot testing mode you can play with.
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[CaNsA]

[BigShow]

So I tried all of this and the only thing that worked was installing Linux mint from a USB. So its alive again. Never used Linux before but so far it seems pretty good.

[Rowey]

I've found that the biggest killers of laptops is heat.

Every couple of months, blow some air through the fans and vents. You'll be supprised how much dust is in there.
Every two years, take the laptop apart, give it a good blow out. Remove the heatsinks from CPU and GPU, clean the old thermal paste off and put on a little bit of good quality new stuff.

Also If you use the laptop on a desk (or even your lap), get a cooling pad. It'll keep the temps down when you're doing strenous tasks.

On one of these two year tune ups, I found the display cable sleeving had worn a little by the screen hinge. I wraped it in a bit of insulating tape to protect it. This would have cut through, killing the screen if I hadn't caught it.
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