Computer crashing at BIOS screen...

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Afternoon,

I have this one user at work whose machine crashes each morning at the BIOS loading screen. It works absolutely fine after rebooting, but it's one of those niggly things that she'd appreciate being fixed.

Any ideas of what could be causing it to happen?

Thanks in advance for your help.

- Alex

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

*holds up a piece of string*

How long is this Alex?

On a more serious note... we need more information in order to be able to troubleshoot the user's problem.

Do you get any error messages?
Have you recently installed any new hardware on the user's PC?
When did it start happening?

Qs

 

Hi Qs - thanks for the prompt response.

No errors in the event log that pertain to the problem, though a desktop scanner was recently installed. The crashing started happening a couple of months after the installation, so I doubt very much that the scanner is at fault.

 

Hmmm ok. I'm assuming there are no STOP messages present either then...

If it was me... I'd replace some core components then just reformat the PC.

But maybe I'm just tired....

It that feasible? If it's an office environment it may just be easier to re-image the PC.

 

maybe something is failing on start up, try setting any BSODS to show on screen when they happen so you can note down the error message

 

Hmm yeah, dodgy RAM stick or the like?

Re-seat all of the core components and see if it helps.

If you're not getting any errors then I'm not 100% sure...

 

Not really feasible to replace the components - we're a small company so have to look after the pennies. If troubleshooting the issue's going to take hours, I'll just re-image the machine as that'll take minutes. Still be nice to know what's causing it though.

- Alex

 

I hear you GBL... but what's peculiar is that everything's A-OK following a reboot. Still, I'll action your advise and report back.

 

I know the answer is probably going to be no.... but the scanner isn't SCSI is it? (I know it probably isn't.)

I had the same sort of issue with a high end Dell workstation with a scsi card and scanner a while back.

 

Which event log was it you checked, the windows or the bios? does sound like a memory problem to me. How many sticks are in the machine?

 

download memtest86 and run it, could have failing dimm. If that passes, get out your multimeter and stick it in the PSU contacts on the motherboard,

if that passes, do a scandisk on the hard drive. If your still not sure after that visit the hard drive manufacturers web site and download their diagnostic tool program and run it.

That all I can think off for now