Solved Aspire X1900 BSODs and issuess with formatting from Recovery Partition

[Darkstrike]

Aspire X1900 BSODs & issues with Win7 restore from Recovery Partition

Hi guys,

You'll have to bear with me as this machine (an Acer Aspire X1900 with Win7 Home Premium) is driving me up the wall and this will be a long explanation....I took it in a week ago from a friend because it was in a constant restart loop just after POST. It would POST, then the second the Win7 logo would come up, it would restart, and continue doing this. This turned out to be a corrupt MBR, so I repaired that and it would then boot, so I gave it back to the gentleman.

He returned it to me 2 days later saying it would work (and more slowly than usual) for a random amount of time and then BSOD. After I received it from him, I used it for awhile and found the same thing. I ran 3-4 or so MemTest86 tests of 4-5 passes, and the Memory seemed fine with no errors reported at all, so I think that's ok. I used the sfc command in the Command prompt to try repairing Windows files, I tried restoring to earlier restore points....neither of these would solve the random BSODS either.

Finally, I thought, ok...I'll do a repair install from the machine's Recovery Partition...ran through all of that....Windows wouldn't even boot, just after POST, the Win7 logo would appear and the system would freeze. I thought, ok, screw this...I'm going to do a complete format and Factory Default install from the Recovery Partition.....

Guess what? Same issue...the machine refuses to boot and just freezes up as the Win7 logo comes on the screen after POST. It won't boot in Safe Mode either (freezes up around a file called "disk.sys", if I remember right...)

Next I thought, ok, I have a Win7 Home Premium DVD here, I'll try using that to use the Recovery Tools to do a Startup Repair.....except THAT didn't work and just gave me some error about Startup Repair not being able to Automatically repair the install.

I am completely at a loss right now and am incredibly frustrated.....what is there left to do to get this blasted thing to boot into the supposedly-now-on-the-hard drive Win7 Factory Default install...? Could the MBR be corrupt again due to my Recovery Partition Factory Default format...? (Shouldn't the Factory Default format have re-setup the MBR anyway...?)

The last thought I had was to somehow recover the Win7 CD key from the partition (is there a way to even get a Win7 CD key from a non-booting install...?) and try using my Win7 Home Premium DVD to install it....

Sorry if the above is poorly organized or hard to understand, I'm frankly just PO'd and have almost given up at this point...ANY help would be GREATLY appreciated ladies and gents! Thanks so much for any ideas or suggestions!!!

EDIT - As a note, S.M.A.R.T. says there's nothing wrong with the hard drive either, and Speccy shows that system temps. are normal.

 

[andrew129260]

You stated smart says its fine, but did you actually test that hard drive? I suggest you use the manufacturers tools to do this.

Here is a tip for you. Smart means nothing. It is not something you should rely on. There are few cases in which it actually works. A hard drive test is a much more reliable approach.

Are there any drivers updates or bios updates that can be done?

 

[Darkstrike]

No, I didn't actually test the hard drive, but I did manage to use the Win7 Home Premium DVD I had laying around and get the CD key for the version of Windows that came installed on the machine....reinstalled everything, and it's been up and solid for 3 hours now, so I'm pretty sure the BSODs and weird behavior were a Windows corruption issue. My problem is solved, thankfully!!! Pretty sure it's solved as it would usually BSOD after a half hour or less when it was doing it before, so, fingers-crossed!!!

HOWEVER, in case I run into this in the future, any suggestions for generic HDD test tools? I've used Western Digital's before (I swear by their drives....I've got an old 80gb WD that I used for a Primary OS drive from 2004 until a month ago in one machine that has 80200 hours of power-on time and it's STILL going strong! )