Resolved Signs of a dead laptop?

Our laptop appeared to give up the ghost yesterday. First, it simply went black on the monitor while my wife was online. She tried alt/ctl/del but could not awaken it and had to hard shut it off. She rebooted and shortly after that it revealed that a crash dump had occurred and... there was more message but the computer crashed a second time. I then rebooted and pressed the F8 key. Instead of going into Safe Mode I chose the repair the computer option. After scanning it reported there was no detectable problem... and then proceeded to crash for me. I also had to hard shut it off and reboot. This time I chose (F8) to restore to an earlier setting (the day before). It did this and then restarted. This time the screen first appeared with colored lines running vertically ... after which it turned completely white. I tried once again after hard shutting it off to reboot but nothing.

This morning we tried once again and it is up and running without any apparent issues.

There had been two critical updates from MS... one on the restore date and one on the crash date. Not sure if they figure into the issues. The question is.... is this the sign of a failing motherboard? The laptop is a four-year-old Dell XPS. Just wondering whether we have a serious problem on our hands or not.

 

Pete, I'll give this a try a bit later. I want you to know that this morning the latest critical updates from MS were again installed and once again. Initially the computer worked (as before, albeit with a dim monitor). We then went over to Starbucks and logged on again... no luck. The monitor showed all black with striped colored lines running vertically.... after which it turned white. We hard shut the laptop off, started in safemode (it worked), went into the add/remove and removed the two KB updates (can't remember their names). After rebooting in normal mode, the computer is up and running perfectly. So it would "appear" that the culprit is the updates from MS. We're off to do some shopping but will log in later today from the hotel to check on your answer. Thanks so much for any light you can shed on this frustrating situation.

 

Back at the hotel now... just booted up and the monitor is exceedingly dark. I can see the text and graphics but this is certainly not normal. The laptop as Win7 Home Premium. It is a four year old Dell XPSS M1330. Perhaps I should pursue the graphics card suggestion... upload new drivers? How do I find out what graphics card I have installed from the computer... or do I need to go to the Dell site?

 

Hi leushino, Google Belarc Advisor and Download and it will tell you what Graphics Display is running. Lavalays Everest Home is another program. SIW is another.Cheers Neil.

 

I checked leushino, the problem was unable to be overcome, so a new laptop was purchased. leushino has marked it Resolved since it has come to a resolution.