HELP: Packard Bell iXtreme won´t boot! + blue screens

Hi everyone, I´m new here. Signed up thanks to my dysfunctional, three year old Packard Bell iXtreme computer. I really hope one of you can help (although more than one of you would be great too!). I´m going to list the problems I have had with it and include the spec at the bottom. In terms of experience I´m not very computer savvy and when I got the black and blue screens I didn´t know what to do so Ididn´t follow their instruction. Also, I wouldn´t really like to open the thing up but would probably do so if required, after a lot of deliberation.

CurrentProblem:

· From March 2012 the computer hasn´t been able to boot. When I press the tower´s on button, the electricity kicks in straight away, it beeps once, the LCD screen stays on standby and al lthe lights in the keyboard light up. Then the situation just hangs. The toweris still running but there is nothing, I don´t even get an option to do system restore or view the BIOS. I am waiting for recovery disks in the post but I know the machine also has a recovery partition which I can´t access due to the BIOS not loading, I imagine!

Black and Blue Screens Jan – March 2012 (the slide into oblivion):

· 1st error message: black screen(early Jan 2012): "windows failed to start. File is possibly corrupt. Its header Checksum does not match the computed Checksum" (see attached photo). I did a system restore. Everything was working again.

· Mid Jan 2012 started receiving blue screens "DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE"plus long error codes (see attached photo). I restarted the computer and did asystem restore. This worked but the computer got progressively slower and more unstable.

· Up until mid Feb 2012 computer had a number of problems; I kept getting the DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE message, it would freeze for half an hour at a time at a click of the mouse (whole system), I would then restart and use system restore on many occasions. The CPU memory usage would just spike around these freezes (I had Norton 360 alerts) and everything would grind to a halt so I tried defragging the computer, disk cleanup and virus scans with Norton but the problem persisted. I was doing system restores often. At times I had to manually restart the computer several times just to get a system restore screen as the "Checksum" message would loop everytime I pressed there start button and also sometimes another message I didn´t write down like"boot" and some other letters.

Possible contributory factors:

Moved house 3 months prior to probs, comp survived ordeal by boat and van for a few days atthe hands of Spanish removal men. The computer was working fine straight afterand for three months or so however.

Wouldn´t wake up from sleep frequently. Would have to unplug then restart to get it working.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Ixtreme X6617 UK

Intel Core 2Quad Q8200 Processor

4GB DDR2

640 GB SATA Hard Disk

(15GB allocated for recovery system)

nVidia GeForce GT120 1024MB to 2303 MB + HDMI

DVD RW R9



Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (updated to SP3 online I think)

Microsoft Office 2007

Norton 360 Internet security



I contacted PackardBell who just said it sounds like a hardware problem but didn´t help any further than that. Could anyone recommend me a solution to this problem? I would be very grateful for some advice. I hope that my computer isn´t ready to go to silicon heaven yet!

Many thanks,

Jules 103

Sorry for the delay in responding, there's not a whole lot of people who do this sort of thing.

Please provide this info: http://www.vistax64.com/crashes-debugging/282419-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html

While waiting for a reply, please start with these free, bootable hardware diagnostics: Initial Hardware Diagnostics . If you finish them, move onto the free diagnostics here: Additional Hardware Diagnostics

Dear usasma,

Thank you for your reply, I really appreciate your interest in helping me.

At the moment I can´t download any software to thecomputer I am using as it is a work laptop (my personal desktop computer beingthe one out of action) so I can´t download the BSOD Dump & System File Collection app. I am wondering whether the BSOD Dump & System File Collection app would only allow me to do a system health check on the computer that I am using anyway? If so, I wouldn´ tbe able to download it from the problem computer anyway. Please let me know if I have misunderstood...



Here is the other information mentioned in the BSOD posting guidelines:

Vista x64

It has the original installed OS on the system

It is OEM

I bought the computer in March 2009. Hardware, 3 years 3 months old.

The OS installation is as old as the computer, 3 years 3 months old.



Regarding the other link, should I try to create the Bootable Memory Diagnostics CD and run it and then the Bootable Hard Drive Diagnostics CD? Are they the tests you are advising me to do? It seems that I have to download software but there is a USB flash drive download version on the page so would this enable me to download this software without saving it to the hard drive? (sorry if that sounds like a stupid question!)

Also, why are these blue screens specifically called Blue Screens of Death? To me, that doesn´t sound good at all!

Many thanks,

Jules103

The point is to get the test(s) to run on the malfunctioning computer - if USB is better for you, then by all means use it. But each of the programs usually requires that you download it before using it. Are you able to download to a USB stick? If you can download to a USB stick, then do that - and then use it to make the CD/USB version.

Blue Screen of Death is a nickname that has stuck to the Blue Screen errors. As a matter of fact, the Blue Screen error is just Windows telling you that it had to stop because there was a potential problem that could have damaged your hardware. Windows is designed to "fail fast" in these circumstances in order to preserve your hardware.

They are most commonly caused by 3rd party (non-Microsoft Windows) drivers. This is followed (in frequency) by hardware problems and then by Windows problems. While this may seem simple enough, there's so many exceptions and overlaps that it becomes a bit complicated.

Here's a bunch of links about BSOD's (my personal website):
- My main page with links to BSOD stuff: http://www.carrona.org/bsod.html
- Further info on BSOD error messages available at: http://www.carrona.org/bsodindx.html
- Info on how to troubleshoot BSOD's (DRAFT): http://www.carrona.org/userbsod.html
- How I do it: http://www.carrona.org/howidoit.html