What's going on with my laptop? (Crash related)

Blue screen of death! Could be caused by any of a number of things (sometimes incompatible combinations of software). If it’s just once, back up what you need, say a wish and move on. If it happens again, I’d try to figure out what’s up.

@dappled_leaves this wasn’t the blue screen of death. The blue screen was a tiny box. I’ve experienced the blue screen of death on my last laptop before, and this was different.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I had a few minutes and was gonna poke around the web, and I realized it may help if we had your windows version: XP, or Vista, or whatever

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Really! That’s a new one for me. My apologies, I misunderstood.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1. AMD Turion II M500 CPU. 4 gigs of RAM. That’s the important stuff, I guess. I should probably note that my laptop has recently had a tendency to run very hot. I have cleaned my vents and fans, and even when I set my computer on a desk with everything unobstructed, it still runs at around 66 to 70 degrees Celsius even when I’m not doing anything intensive on it.

@dappled_leaves oh you’re fine. Thanks anyway!

High temperatures cause all sorts of failures, especially in a laptop.

More later, after I get home and on a computer instead of my phone.

PHow old is the laptop? Try popping in the install CD and doing a repair install, but if you want to be thourough test the HD and RAM with hirens 12 13 sucks

@XOIIO almost two years old.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Well, really that getting near the end of it life span for the average laptop, not sure what quality it is. I would propbably wipe the HD, sell it and buy a modern one modern for a month, that is XD, or huck the old one to a grateful salvager. * shifty eyes *

How long a laptop lasts depends on how it is treated and what brand it it. Such a discussion is beyond the scope of this question, except to say that I have seen many laptops last far longer.

For diagnostics, I favor “Parted Magic:“http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=start which has everything you need to test RAM and do all sorts of things with/to your hard drive. It is a Live CD, so merely running tests won’t make any permanent changes to your system, but it will troubleshoot your hardware.

@XOIIO Unless the laptop used low quality parts, two years should be somewhere in the middle of its useful life. I have heard a rule of thumb that states that laptops typically last four years. Last fall, when my previous laptop failed, the local tech I called said that pretty typically the see laptop hard drives begin to fail when they are between four to five years old, with one occasionally lasting a little longer.

I have never experienced the type of black screen, blue box appearance described in the opening question. However, because it said it was beginning a memory dump, it sounds like a standard BSOD. Given the fact that his laptop routinely runs that hot, it is quite possible that the video processor hardware is on the brink of thermal failure. When that happens (I speak from experience) replacing the laptop is the only option (unless you don’t mind spending several hundred bucks for a new motherboard.)