Blue screen error

hubb

My PC suddenly shuts down for no reason more and more often. It's a Medion from Aldi about 8 years old running XP

Stop (blue screen) error caused by a device or driver
You received this message because a hardware device, its driver, or related software has caused a stop error, also called a blue screen error. This type of error means the computer has shut down abruptly to protect itself from potential data corruption or loss. In this case, we were unable to detect the specific device or driver that caused the problem.
The following troubleshooting steps might prevent the stop error from recurring. Try them in the order given. If one step does not solve the problem, then move on to the next one.

It could be a million things and I haven't a clue where to start.

Dussed

Tried pressing F8 on startup and booting in safe mode?

Figment

What was the actual stop error?

Please incude the full line of error codes too (0x?????? etc)

If the BSOD doesn't stay on the screen long enough to read it, see this post for instructions to prevent your computer automatically restarting.

-TangleFoot-

Figment wrote: »

If the BSOD doesn't stay on the screen long enough to read it, see this post

Alternatively, have WhoCrashed read the contents of the memory dump the BSOD left behind.

Figment

-TangleFoot- wrote: »

Alternatively, have WhoCrashed read the contents of the memory dump the BSOD left behind.

Funnily enough, that is suggested at the bottom of the post I linked to

robmar0se

An alternative to the above specifically for XP, try in safe mode (F8 key immediately afterthen go to the control panel/system/advanced/startup & recovery and remove tick in the box labelled "automatic restart".

If it BSODs before you can try this or the alternatives above, you can try and get the safemode option to give you an extended start menu which may include an option to turn-off the automatic restart. To do this start in safe mode, when the menu appears, if there is no option to disable the autorestart, then press the ctl-alt-del keys together to restart the system again; usually after three/four attempts of doing the same thing the system will give you the extended menu option.

hubb

I ran "what crashed" (excellent program) and I got this:

On Tue 29/05/2012 20:17:30 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini053012-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: win32k.sys (win32k+0x152C39)
Bugcheck code: 0x1000008E (0xFFFFFFFFC0000005, 0xFFFFFFFFBF952C39, 0xFFFFFFFFB4100C00, 0x0)
Error: KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED_M
file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\win32k.sys
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: Multi-User Win32 Driver
Bug check description: This indicates that a kernel-mode program generated an exception which the error handler did not catch.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver

Dussed

Have you updated any drivers recently?

hubb

Not that I remember.