Vocal Voices

I seem to have started to get a recurring problem when I'm booting up the PC. Windows 7 initialises OK until I get to the standard desktop screen, with my shortcuts down the side.

What happens then - and it's intermittent, doesn't happen every time - is that the computer suddenly freezes. The cursor gets locked, and the blue activity light goes from shining brightly to flashing very faintly on a repetitive basis, as if there's some sort of low level activity going on in the background, but I can't do anything. All I can do is press the reboot button. The computer closes, reopens, I get the usual black "not shut down correctly" screen, and the 25 second countdown to "restart normally". If I restart normally, it then boots up correctly and the computer is operational.

I had a look at the Action Centre in the Control Panel and it was flagging up a series of errors that had been logged. I asked the Action Centre to troubleshoot the problems and it said it wanted more information and to report the problem to Microsoft, but I think that's a bit of a red herring.

I have saved a copy of the details as a .jpeg, but essentially what the details of each event appear to be is as follows:

Windows
Problem: video hardware error
Files that help describe the problem
WD-20140227-1430.dmp (the numbers vary in each event and there are currently 50 such events)
sysdata.xml
WERInternalMetadata.xml
View a temporary copy of these files
Warning: if a virus or other security threat caused this problem, opening a copy of these files could harm your computer

I have AVG (paid for) and Microsoft Security Essentials (free) installed, and neither has reported any virus problem when scanning.

Any thoughts as to what's going on, guys? Much appreciated!

Try this:http://www.totalsystemcare.com/lp/aw/fix-errors/?error=Sysdata.Xml%20Errors&gclid=CLrEwYi6uMUCFWvMtAodAEEAMw

I have given up on W8 or 8.1 I just go with the flow...

W10 is going to be the last Windows OS, from now on it will be upgrades only. Get it free, then forget it.

To me this sounds like a classic disk problem manifesting itself as something else because Windows can't load the files.

Especially the activity light going to flickering, this is normally representative of windows trying to read the drive.

First I would try to chkdsk the C drive and see what it comes up with.

Open a command prompt and type in the following

chkdsk /f /r

It should schedule the chkdsk for the next boot. Reboot and watch it, it will take a while. Sadly it will complete and you won't see the final message which tells you how many bad sectors etc it has found.

But it's a good start.

OK, thanks both !

WM, sorry, couldn't access your link.

Suff, I initiated chkdsc last night (going the long way round via Computer/Hard Drive/ Properties/Tools/Check disc).

The "find and fix file system errors" option was selected by default and I went with that (not the "scan for bad sectors and recover" option), and scheduled it to run the task on the next boot-up, which was this morning.

Surprisingly, it didn't take long, under 5 minutes, and Windows then completed the boot up successfully. So I missed the finish of the chkdsc task, unfortunately, as I was reading the "Metro". I don't think it found anything.

Anyway, we shall see what happens next. Do you think it's the graphics drivers, guys, as I've had trouble with the graphics before? The NVidia graphics card failed about a year back and the guy who repaired it took the card out and downloaded deivers from the net (is "onboard" the technical term?)

Ossie, You could first try to run the System File Checker from an elevated command prompt with the sfc /scannow command .

Open an elevated command prompt as Administrator. The shortcut 'cmd' is in Accessories in your Start Menu. A right click should give you the option 'Run as administrator'. If that is not an option the program is located in C:\Windows\system32 as cmd a right click there should offer the 'Run as administrator' option. Click enter and let SFC do its work.

Looking back at your post it does seem that the graphics card could be the problem. New drivers might work but the heading "Problem: video hardware error" seems to suggest it might be a bit more than a software problem.

Hi Ossie,

The reason I selected /R (sector scanning), was because I think it's moving files around and putting them on bad sectors. It's unlikely that it would have found much in the way of bad sectors from a file scan, all it did was scan the already used areas of the drive.

What I wanted was for windows to scan the entire drive and pick up any failing sectors which are not already used. In that way Windows would not put any files on the disk where it can't then read them again.

Personally I'd do the disk check again with the sector analysis on. I already have one drive doing that. I have to scan it every now and again. It's probably doing that to spite me for dropping it...

Also the SFC /Scannow can check your system files. But I think that it's failing on writing temporary files then giving a spurious error. When windows is really broken it gives the same error over and over again. When the disk is borked it gives dozens of different errors.

Just my twopenneth worth...