I've been having random BSODs in my computer ever since I decided to switch my old tube monitor to a new LCD one. Sometimes the computer doesn't even finish loading the OS. I've checked connectors and they're all fine. I've had this happen last week or so as well, but after windows did a scandisk the problem stopped for a while, until now, that is. The thing is, I'm running Windows XP with SP3, and I just can't find a way to manually do a scandisk, which is starting to become a pain in the arse. It used to be that you could do it from the Start menu, but it's not there anymore and searching my disk for "scandisk" turns out with no results. Could anybody tell me how to manually run it? I'm not quite looking for a solution for the BSODs themselves as that would be too much of a hassle probably, and I wouldn't mind doing a 2 minute scandisk every week or so if the other option is having to buy new hardware or formatting my HDD. EDIT: I posted this in this forum section since the whole problem is hardware related eventhough the solution I'm asking for is probably more software related, so if any mod feels it doesn't belong here, I apologise.
goto my computer, right click your c:drive, left click properties & select the tools tab at top & click on "check now" for error checking.
Ah, thanks again, ddp, I'd have never found that out by myself. Unfortunately when I tried running it it just immediatly said scandisk finished or something along those lines almost as soon as it started, whereas the last time it ran it did everything as expected, scanning the disk and showing the percentage of how much had been scanned, then showing the scan's results later. Anyhow, apparently most of the BSODs I'm getting seem to have something to do with the "win32k.sys" file and everytime I get a BSOD related to it seems to be when the computer must handle a task, such as opening a new website URL, clicking a link, starting an application, or trying to change graphics settings in a game, although it doesn't always happen when trying to do one of those things, just with a certain frequency, although still enough to happen every 10 minutes or so of computer usage without much if any multi-tasking. Could anybody explain what could be causing this? Also, could it be that replacing the "win32k.sys" file would stop this madness? If so, where could I download it from (and if there isn't any official place to get it from, could any kind soul running Windows XP with SP3 upload it for me somewhere, please)?
I would also try a chkdsk /f on the drive as well. From a command prompt, type 'chkdsk /f'. it will probably ask if you want to scan next time windows boots. Say yes, then reboot and let it run. ~Rich Edit: You could also run an "sfc /scannow" from a command prompt to ensure the core windows files have not been replaced.
Well, after doing those scans the BSODs outside applications seem to have stopped, although now I"m unable to run my games because shortly after starting the game I'll either get a CTD some of the times, and on all other occasions it'll be BSODs or just plain computer freezes which require me to reboot it via the reset button. I'm positive now that it has something to do with drivers, most probably the video one, since on one of the BSODs the name of a video driver file appeared as the cause (and still lots of win32k.sys BSODs). Still, I was using this very same driver before replacing my monitor without any problems at all. Updating it to the latest version didn't help, either. I'm out of ideas of what to do.