Solved BSOD on friend's laptop - Memory dump reports BCCode f4, etc.

[Kraggybottom]

I'm trying to help repair a friend's laptop. Last week he reported it crashed without warning (he couldn't remember what software he was using at the time). He set it to do Startup repair, which it performed for about a day. It will boot now into Windows, but takes about an hour to do this (took 40 minutes to boot into Safe Mode just now). I wonder if there may be some malicious software behind all this. Ran MalwareBytes & it found some PUP's but nothing particularly sinister. Have run CCLeaner (including Registry Cleaner), & have defragged the hard drive but it's made no difference. The machine originally had Panda antivirus on it, & my research shows that this caused all sorts of problems with systems it was installed on in March of this year, but presumably this isn't the problem as this ahhpened last week. Uninstalled it as a precautionary measure & to try & get Avast on (as it was saying it couldn't be installed as there was a conflict with Panda); in order to do a full system scan & boot sector scan, but Avast will not run a full scan. It's just unresponsive, even after an hour or so the scan will not start, so that's proven to be a dead-end. The best it did was launch a Quick scan, which found nothing.

I took some photographs of the Memory Dump window, as there was no other practical way I could think of to record this information (taking screenshots didn't seem like a viable option). So below is what was reported by the system last week:

Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown

Problem signature:

Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 2057

Additional information about the problem:

BCCode: f4
BCP1: 0000000000000003
BCP2: FFFFFA8008E06B10
BCP3: FFFFFA8008E06DF0
BCP4: FFFFF8*00037CEE70
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 768_1

(* Hard to tell from the photo if thhis was a 8 or a B - I think it's an 8).

Files that help describe the problem:

C:\Windows\Minidump\082415-51620-01.dmp
C:\Users\Temp\Appdata\Local\Temp\WER-8963645-0.sysdata.xml


I ran CCleaner, thinking that might help improve the system, but it's deleted the Minidump file the system generated when it crashed last week (I didn't realise that the dump file was of significance at the time). I've managed to get Piriform Recova onto the laptop in the hope of undeleting the memory dump file so it can be viewed in order to isolate what's happened, but I'm really not sure how to find it. Did a wildcard search for *.dmp files & it returned two from last year which are obviously of no use & were recorded as unrecoverable. If anyone knows how to locate the required files, then please could you guide me as to where to look? And if the file is irretrievable now is there any other way to try & establish what's happened or would I be best off to simply reinstall Windows 7 to a factory install state? Really want to avoid this if at all possible as the seller on eBay sold the laptop to my friend with a huge iTunes library, Office 2013 & Photoshop Essentials preloaded, so he really doesn't want to wipe the drive unless there's absolutely no other alternative.

I'm at my wits' end with it! It's driving me round the bend & I really just want to get the thing working as it should be again ASAP - I mean, it has an i5 processor & 6Gb of RAM...it'd normally be flying along, but sadly right now that's most certainly not the case! Any help would be most gratefully received.

 

[koolkat77]

Do you still need help with this?

 

[Kraggybottom]

Hi koolkat77,

Thanks for getting back to me. As no-one had replied after over a week had passed I presumed the situation was irretrievable, so I suggested to my pal that the best thing would be to take the laptop to a computer repair shop near to where he lives in Hoylake, which we did yesterday afternoon. They estimate they'll have the problem diagnosed by tomorrow & estimate a fee of £80 to complete the work. Frustrating not to be able to fix the machine for him as a favour after spending so many hours working on it for him, but hey-ho. As Mr Eastwood so memorably said as Dirty Harry: "A man's got to know his limitations." On this occasion I've found out where mine are!

Will mark the thread as resolved.

Cheers,
David.