Blue Screen and Memory Dump after opening directory with many images

[arzoo]

My laptop suddenly got very slow and then produced a blue screen and did a quick memory dump. I wasn't able to to read the information or codes on the screen because the screen lasted like 2 or seconds and computer restarted.

I was testing something with MS paint and tried saving it to the a directory in the pictures library (the dir had about 180 or so images). It took a while and the save screen would not show all the files in the directory. The laptop got real slow from there, I tried opening explorer to the pictures directory and it wouldn't load properly. Just a very slow loading green progress bar on explorer. Then the blue screen. At this time CPU usage was around 20-30% while mem usage was 62% or so.

When it restarted things were very, very,very slow. It took 10-15 mins, before I could press any of the objects on the window startup screen and icons. And when I did press any icons, like chrome, it took a real long time to load, and after I couldn't do anything because each click took a lifetime to execute. CPU usage was low and mem was like 30%

I restarted using safe mode, which looked ok. Then restarted again and things look ok since then, except that it seems to get slow when 3-4 applications are open, even if mem usage is like 60% or so.

My specs are pentium dual core T4500 2.3ghz
2gb ram, windows starter, 32bit
262gb free out of 297gb, 35gb used

What happened and is there a way to fix things. Things seem slower than they were before when a number of apps are open. I ran avast last night and malware bytes to check for problems but both came up clean.

At some point yesterday, when it got real slow to the point where you couldn't do anything, I was contemplating on reinstalling. How difficult is it to do this just in case. I use a asus machine with linux that has a reset where you just reset it and it goes back to clean start of linux, very clean, one-click simple if you get into trouble. Is there such a thing for windows?

One last thing I'm running chrome right now with 2 tabs open, in the task manager, I see 7 chrome.exe processes with mem usage ranging from 103,000k to 5000k. why is that happening?

Thanks.

 

[Brink]

Hello arzoo, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Please go ahead and read the link below to post back with the needed information for someone to hopefully be able to help later with it.

Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) Posting Instructions

 

[arzoo]

Here's the zip of folder created by the diagnostic tool

 

[richc46]

Welcome
I have examined your reports and the first thing that I noticed is that you do not seem to have SP1 installed. Install SP1 and see if you continue to get BSODs. Post back either way.
Run a full anti virus scan, be sure to update the anti virus
Download, update and run a full scan with malwarebytes.

 

[arzoo]

I'll update windows with SP1.

I did run a full scan with avast anti-virus and also malwarebytes last night and nothing was found.

 

[richc46]

ok do the update and post any new reports.

 

[arzoo]

A question about windows updates. Should you update whenever it has a new update and how do you know which updates you need?

Thanks.

 

[richc46]

If you set your updater to update automatically, it will download and install only what you need.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2797-windows-update-settings-change.html

 

[arzoo]

Thanks.

I've updated windows with SP1 as well as the other important updates.

Here's another installment of the sf diagnostic tool.

Things seemed to work fine, but when I came back from work, I tried turning it on and it went back to being very very slow, like 5 mins to load explorer, about 4 mins to start adobe reader (tried by double clicking the main screen icon).

Had 2 blue screens so far and am doing this from safe mode.

Not sure what caused things. I remember that the last thing that was installed was virtualdub, audacity, freemake video converter and h264 codec for my brother's project in school. Not sure if that has anything to do with what's happening but that was the last change.

Hope someone can help or else, at its current state, the you can't get any work done on this laptop.

 

[richc46]

One of the two dumps indicated potential hard drive problems. Go to the website of your hard drive manufacturer and test the drive.
If no errors found
Make a clean boot and if the computer works the way it should follow procedure
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...ation-conflicts-performing-clean-startup.html

 

[arzoo]

I downloaded the hdd manufacturer's diagnostic tool and after the extended test it said there are some bad sectors that may be repairable.

I want to back up the whole thing before repairing. What's the best way to back the whole thing up? Or what should you back up in cases like this?

Also, it has a repair button to try to repair, should I use that one or is there something better?

 

[richc46]

Everyone should back up everything once a month
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html
Use the repair and then test, again.
Now this is what you should know. Lets assume that the problem with the Hard Drive is scratches (to make it simple) that cant be read. The repair does not remove the scratches, it just sets up the hard drive that those sectors will not be written on again. Bottom line, if the Hard Drive was the cause of your BSOD problem, they will not stop because of this repair.

 

[arzoo]

Thanks.

So I backed up the drive, ran checkdisk and there were bad blocks which it repaired. I attached the result log of the checkdisk. I looked at the windows event log and since the chkdsk there hasn't been any errors from the disk. Things have run ok so far since the chkdsk.

However, bad news is that the quick test and extended test of the western digital drive dianostics both failed, even after the checkdisk. It always gets stuck towards the end and says something like cannot read a part of the disk and the error code number associated to it.

My question now is what to do with the disk. Does it get worse, ie. once there are bad blocks it just keeps increasing over time? Also, how bad is it, is there a way to know what area is busted and how bad?

I'm hoping I don't need to replace it because I'm really, really tight on funds at the moment.

 

[richc46]

Errors are due to two reasons. One from a one shot deal; bad shutdown, etc.
The other is that your Hard Drive is failing. The advice that we give to all, because there is no way to tell is to back up your stuff and get a new hard drive. The alternative is to use the computer and just hope for the best.
I do know that your hard drive IS STILL damaged, the fix was just a bandaid that hides the damage from the computer.
That being said, you have just 24kb of bad sectors, not very much.
Lets try an SFC and see what is damaged.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

 

[arzoo]

Richard,

Thanks for all the great help.

Sorry it took a while to reply, was away for work for a few days.

I did SFC check and put the log into a text file.

I don't really understand what it means, aside from the longer lines which indicate problems.

What do you think?

 

[richc46]

Richard,

Thanks for all the great help.

Sorry it took a while to reply, was away for work for a few days.

I did SFC check and put the log into a text file.

I don't really understand what it means, aside from the longer lines which indicate problems.

What do you think?

Dont know where I said the bolded section.
In any event, the HD, does have problems, the OS does have errors. I have to assume that the HD as a cause of your problems. You failed the HD test.
I suggest that you back up your stuff, NOW, and have an expert look at the HD.

 

[arzoo]

Will do. Thanks for the help Rich.