Computer crashed.....
 

I have a Dell E310 that is about 3 years old. Sundayt night all of a sudden a blue screen came up[ says that windows has shutdown to prevent damage to the computer. It said that file win32.sys was the problem. I press the off/on button and held it in and the computer went off. There are some lights on the CPU, numbered 1-4. When I turned the computer back on light 3 and 4 came on and 1 and 2 blinked on and off. I didn't get power the screen, keyboard, or mouse.

I took the computer in to be repaired yesterday morning, it will be 7-10 days before I get it back. Anyone have any ideas as to what it could be? I just want to know what to expect. Thanks

Sounds like it needs a format.

???? I was thinking a memoery stick issue.

Would a format cause me to loose all my files?

The problem is that is wasn't a Mac. :D

I was wondering how long it would take before someone said that.

It's hard to say, but the computer might be infected with viruses. Something must have corrupted that critical OS file. I'd try copying that file from the Windows installation CD and doing some anti-virus checking. If that doesn't work, it may be time to re-format the hard drive.

in most cases it's power supply related, cheap dell, cheaper power supplies

format would lose all files unless operating system was on a partition

Yes, that's why it's usually the last resort.

Rreading the problem sounds like your correct in that you have a hardware problem.




Possibly a stick of memory. Do you get any video?

:d:d:d

Do I get any video???? What do you mean?

Had a memory stick go bad about a year ago and had similar problems but not exactlt the same.

Thanks

Eh, don't get me started on "max" :P

It's a memory error, per the FSM:
http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/6...ghtsld0.th.jpg
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/2828/57wk8.th.jpghttp://img177.imageshack.us/img177/6817/58vr5.th.jpghttp://img174.imageshack.us/img174/7600/67bd3.th.jpghttp://img172.imageshack.us/img172/4116/68av8.th.jpg

Random memory errors also occur with perfectly good RAM. Cosmic rays flip bits. I recall that the rate is about 1 bit per gigabyte per month.

To prevent it from impacting your machine, you use ECC memory. Servers typically require this type of memory (which uses 36 bit words rather than 32) and some desktops will use it, but you can't mix ECC with non-ECC memory. Also most ECC memory that you find is server memory, which is "registered" or "buffered," meaning that there is an output latch for the data, and I have never seen a desktop that could take it.

If you build your own computer, most mid-high end motherboards should have ECC options

Do you get any images on the screen when you go to boot it?