Date: 01/15/07 (Computer Help)    Keywords: software, microsoft

The other day I was on my computer and a blue screen flashed up, the PC rebooted itself too quickly for me to see what the blue screen said. Then once it had rebooted, as soon as I tried to log on to my Windows XP account, the blue screen came back up and said that there was a serious driver error (paraphrasing here) and that it could be something to do with a software or hardware fault. Windows refused to start because of this. It said to check any new software or hardware installed ( I haven’t installed anything new for ages, besides drivers for my video card).
So it kept doing the rebooting thing, until I started Windows in Safe Mode with Networking (for the internet) and luckily all my files etc were still there and usable. I could connect to the internet etc. About a week beforehand, I had downloaded drivers from Nvidia for the video card, as my Sims 2 game kept crashing and the report back from Microsoft said it was a problem with the video card drivers. So I uninstalled those completely and what do you know – no more blue screen when I logged into XP normally. I thought the problem was solved, but unfortunately now my internet isn’t working (I am posting this from work). I have broadband, and there is usually a little icon down in the corner of my taskbar with two little computers, showing my LAN connection to my ISP (I guess) and it is just not there anymore. If I try to get my ISP to connect, it just says that the local area network connection wasn't found. I thought it might be a problem with my modem, but I don’t think it is because before, when I was still on dial up, the icon was still there, only it just showed a red cross over it to say that it wasn’t connected. The lights and everything on the modem are working.

I reinstalled those Nvidia drivers, thinking that might solve the problem, but unfortunately not. The blue screen hasn’t come back though.

I really know nothing about video cards, (my last computer had crappy onboard graphics) so I’m taking a guess here that the card controls the networking for the computer? If so, would it be a hardware issue where a new video card would fix it? I have been wanting a new one anyway, but I don’t want to get one yet if that’s not the problem.

I tried doing a repair installation of XP but no dice. I’m hesitant to do a complete reformat because I have about 160 gigs of stuff I’d have to backup onto discs first, and that is a royal pain in the butt – especially if I did the reformat and then discover that a new video card would have fixed it all along!

I hope some of this has made sense to someone.

These are my specs from where I had the PC built:

AMD Athlon 64 4600+ Dual Core
• Nvidia Geforce 6600GT 128MB PCI Express Video Card
• 1024 MB DDR2 RAM
• Seagate 200GB Serial ATA Hard Drive

If someone could offer some advice, I'd be extremely grateful!

Cross posted.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computer_help/735911.html