Anyone had to deal with Windows "blue screen of death"???

[Dsnygirl]

So, my DH called me, frustrated beyond belief... our DD11 was on YouTube, looking at card trick videos, and suddenly, what is known as the "blue screen of death" suddenly came up on the computer. She went and told him, and of course, he shut the system down... but it's not doing anything when he turns it back on but sitting there as a black screen. :confused: (I'm at work on our comptuers here... thankfully, I can at least search for answers here... ;) )

He called our "computer guy" and he's taking it to him Sunday night... :fingers: :fingers: that it's okay and we haven't lost everything, b/c I can't even tell you how incredibly awful that would be... we have had MAJOR computer issues in the past, and this is a new system, only a yr and half old...

Does anyone have ANY experience with this???

[Itchy]

I have not had the blue screen but my lady friend has had the FBI warning virus on her computer.

You Tube and other web sites can carry virus and trogans that you never know are there until its to late.

I use AVG free virus protection and Spybot spyware free protection and have had good luck. But! like any of the others its not perfect.

The lady friend was able to do a scan using safe mode and getting her problem resolved with apparenly came from a Vet's web site where you conversered with a real Vet.

The jury is still out on that since her cat passed away as a direct or in direct result of her interaction and advise. I will leave it a that.

Bottom Line BEWARE OF YOU TUBE STUFF. Not all of it is bad but let your virus / spyware be your guide.

Hope this helps...:mickey:

[1DisneyNut]

It is hard to give you much advice without more information. When you reboot the computer do you at least get the boot screen where you can press one of the "f" buttons to get to safe mode or bios or anything? If that is not even coming up, I am afraid it is very bad news. If that is the case, most likely your hard drive has failed and you will have to replace it and reinstall the OS and you have most likely lost your data on that drive. This is why I always have my OS on one drive and my data files on another. I copy all important files to the other drive so I have two copies and really important files, I copy to an external drive as well.

If you get the boot screen and can get to safe mode, you might can salvage it. One thing you can try is downloading and burning a Linux Live antivirus CD. This is a Linux Operating system that you burn to a CD and is bootable (you can also now do it on usb flash drives). You put the disc in the drive, reboot the computer and if the bios is set to boot from CD first, it will boot up in the Linux OS. You can then run the antivirus and try to clean up your hard drive. A good one that I highly recommend is called "Dr. Web Cure It". If it doesn't boot to the CD, you will need to change the boot order to boot from CD first in bios if you can get to it. This is all assuming that you have gotten a virus.

Once you get it all fixed and running, I highly recommend Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus. It is a free antivirus available from Microsoft that is updated often and is just as functional as a paid antivirus.

Another thing I would recommend is to set your children up their own user account on the computer WITHOUT administrator privileges (i.e. a regular user account). Put a password on the administrator account that the children do NOT know and do not give it to them. This way, they cannot install apps or programs that may contain viruses and also protects against malware auto-installing. This way you have to go to the computer and can review what is being installed and approve it yourself or kill it. Never, ever, ever, run under and surf the internet on a user account with Administrator privileges. This is one of the easiest and best things you can do to protect your computer from malware and viruses.

EDIT: I just thought of a question I should have asked. Have you recently updated any programs on the computer such as Adobe Flash or installed any new ones?

[Dsnygirl]

Wow, thank you so much!! I am at work, so will hav to go back and re-read your post to better understand it, and will print it out for my DH... but from what I understand from him, he was able to get it to safe mode.... but it came up with all the icons on the home page being huge, and he shut it down again, and it is currently off. He is taking it to a "computer fix-it" guy who has worked on our older computers, guessing he will be able to see what happened far faster (and safer) than we can. Hoping the fact that he was able to get it into safe mode once bodes well for us... I will get back to asking a few questions about your other comments later. But THANK YOU!! :)

PS - I don't think we have installed any new programs, but I might have updated Flash or Adobe... ??

[1DisneyNut]

That is definitely good news that he can get to safe mode. Your computer guy should be able to get it cleaned up and going in no time. One thing you can try yourself is boot up into safe mode and then see if you can run a virus scan. You could also try doing a system restore to a restore point several days or a week or two ago.

The reason I asked if you had updated anything such as adobe flash lately is because a couple of adobe flash updates as well as a few updates for some other programs have caused issues similar to yours in the past. I haven't heard of it happening in the last year or two but it does happen. When your computer goes nuts and you aren't exactly sure why, one of the first things you want to ask yourself is what have I changed, installed or updated lately and then do a little research and see if there are any reports of them causing problems. When this happens, the fix is usually simple; just roll back to the previous version or use system restore.

[BrerGnat]

It will probably be okay. We get that about once a month over here. It can be salvaged.

Go buy an external hard drive and back up anything important and store it on there. You really can't rely on computers to safely store files anymore.

Good luck!