alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Today my computer, an Acer AX3690, with Intel Core i3 and running Windows7 suffered a shutdown, which thenstopped it restarting, it giving me a message that it couldn't communicate with the OS and the usual errors, 8fffff springs to mind?

My eldest had copied and pasted an image off Google Images, then printed it onto sticky-backed plastic to decorate a BMX he mucks about on.

When I came to it the screen was dark. I assumed it was just resting, but it refused to restart, saying there had been an unexpected shutdown. then as above.

Then it refused to do anything.

I forced the shutdown and followed instructions, first letting it have a go at repair, which failed twice.
Then I tried resetting to a previous known working point, noticing that there had been a Windows update recently.....

It failed.
I tried again, choosing a date about a month ago.
It came up as failed again

I asked it to close that programme, it flashed up a screen asking if I wanted shutdown too. I was about to click on "yes" when it went black screen.

Then Windows restarted again. Finally, after doing some disc checks and file checks, it restarted properly, but leaving me a small window saying the last reset WAS successful. Closing it let it complete the startup.

So, some questions for any clever souls, if I may:

What probably happened?

Why?

Can I avoid it in future?

TIA....be kind in any replies, I'm not much good at techy stuff, the answers to the second two are probably going to be more use to me.

Tidgy

could be any number of things mate, might just be a software corruption somewhere in windows which it managed to fix on the 3rd go.

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Should I be worried? Take it to an expert for a check-up?

Tidgy

back up your stuff just in case (good practise anyway), but other than that see how it goes.

When did you last install windows?

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

Most likely candidates are minor software corruption, possibly combined with a transitory memory-management, power-stability or over-heating event, but you'll probably never know for sure unless you're unlucky enough for the component involved to die completely in the next few weeks.

As others have said, back up your stuff just in case, and if you want to go belt-and-braces, contact Acer Support or take it to a decent shop so they can look for (or tell you how to look for) disk-health, heating, power or other diagnosable hardware issues. They/you should be able to pick up the obvious stuff, but there's only so much you can do unless you have almost unlimited time and access to very sophisticated kit and software.

jpor

iTrader: (1)

Might be worth doing Virus and Anti-Spam checks on the system. I take it you keep an up-to-date anti virus program?
As others have said it could have been anything. There is an 'Event Viewer' in windows which is found in 'system administration', which logs all blue screen and errors.
But you will need sometime to look at what has gone wrong and it isn't always obvious. You may have failing hardware to some software/Operating system files became corrupt because of a failing RAM issue (Have you checked if you have the same amount of RAM being reported in Windows?) to a Hardware driver issue that caused the hard drive to stop responding (Can be known). Good Luck.

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Thanks for all responses.
It did the same on startup yesterday morning, only this time I couldn't get it to start at all.
It's now gone to a decent place for repair.

I'll report back what happens...on the wife's laptop at the mo...I hate laptops!