O/T: Dreaded blue screen

Knight9 · Nov 23, 2020

I have an old(and faithful) laptop that I pretty much only use for web browsing, YouTube, and notations along with storage of old files, resumes, pics etc.

I believe I got my slim leather wallet too close/on top of the mouse track pad/chassis and the screen went blank. I had to shut it off and now when I start it.. it takes a long time to get through the booting process and makes me elect safe mode, safe mode w networking, last known Configuration, start as normal.
I have tried all those options and before any homepage comes up..it goes to the blue screen with the white text.

What have I fucking done?

And what can I do?

A new laptop was inevitably in the short term future plans but itd be nice to have this run again/a bit longer and not lose files.

0893 · Nov 23, 2020

Running Windows 10? When you are at the blue screen is there a stop code(should be near the bottom)? That can tell you why it crashed.

Knight9 · Nov 23, 2020

0893 said:
Running Windows 10? When you are at the blue screen is there a stop code(should be near the bottom)? That can tell you why it crashed.

Windows Vista.

Btw I mentioned wallet because there's is a weak magnet in the wallet and it was near simultaneous initially when the problem occurred.

Bleed · Nov 23, 2020

If you have your recovery disk that is your best bet right now. If your lucky it's just a driver issue. I would think that even you fried your mobo or something else that your laptop has an HDD. It's unlikely the drive is dead and more likely you killed your hardware (shorted motherboard, etc) or simply corrupted your windows installation.

Should be easy to get all your data off the drive even if the laptop is dead.

First check to see if you have that disk.

TedDansen · Nov 23, 2020

If you can't get into safe mode, you might look around in the BIOS and the pre-boot options, to see if there are any utilities that will let you check the disk. Otherwise I would pull the drive out and plug it into another computer so you can get your files.

Bleed · Nov 23, 2020

Vista was hit and miss with OEM recovery boot options. Some didnt have the setup at all. That's why I tell everyone who buys a big name PC to always keep that recovery disk.

TedDansen said:
If you can't get into safe mode, you might look around in the BIOS and the pre-boot options, to see if there are any utilities that will let you check the disk. Otherwise I would pull the drive out and plug it into another computer so you can get your files.

TedDansen · Nov 23, 2020

Bleed said:
Vista was hit and miss with OEM recovery boot options. Some didnt have the setup at all. That's why I tell everyone who buys a big name PC to always keep that recovery disk.

Oh yes, I agree. My suggestion is in case the setup disk option doesn't work or isn't available.

0893 · Nov 23, 2020

TedDansen said:
If you can't get into safe mode, you might look around in the BIOS and the pre-boot options, to see if there are any utilities that will let you check the disk. Otherwise I would pull the drive out and plug it into another computer so you can get your files.

^This is what I would do. take out the drive. Then get a SATA to USB cable, connect the drive to another computer to get any important files off of it. Then try reinstalling windows.