Computer Bluescreen Shutdown, start of something bad? Help!

Hardware and technical stuff
1

Okay, I came home from work to find my desktop back from a fresh boot. This is unusual. Windows has “shut down unexpectedly” as the cause at 7:56 AM. It came back up on its own without any problems, obviously, but I have no idea what happened and I’m more than a little worried. Doing another round of backups right now, but wanted to see if someone smarter than me has any idea or can tell me what to do.

Vista 64-bit
Service Pack 1

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Files that help describe the problem (some files may no longer be available)
Mini071811-01.dmp
sysdata.xml
Version.txt

Extra information about the problem
BCCode: 109
BCP1: A3A039D89C3055C6
BCP2: 0000000000000000
BCP3: BBEA686E76B7FBEE
BCP4: 0000000000000101
OS Version: 6_0_6001
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 768_1
Server information: e7f1b420-bcf6-438a-a342-479dfd68e81c

2

I had a similiar thing happen that turned out to be a bad memory stick.

http://www.memtest.org/ Put this on a bootable CD or usb thumbdrive (there are instructions for this on the site), boot to it, and let it run for a few hours. That will tell you if there is a problem.

Edit: http://www.memtest.org/download/4.20/memtest86+-4.20.usb.installer.zip that’s what you want, if your computer can boot from a USB stick.

3

Also check out the event reports in ‘Manage’ via right clicking on ‘My Computer’. They are normally my first diagnostic step (I think Vista has something that’s a bit more involved, but it shoudl be easy enough to find).

4

I am genuinely pleased that blue-screens are so rare now that if one happens, you’re all panicked about some disastrous hardware failure.

5

That’s where I copy/pasted from. Windows doesn’t know what caused it.

6

This is unrelated (possibly?) to your blue screen, but you are pretty far behind on updating, Matt. SP2 for Vista came out in Q1 of '09.

7

Yeah, I spent all weekend catching up on updates, and I’m shutting down during the day and night. No problems when I used it over the weekend, and I only left it on overnight once when it was downloading something like 110 critical Windows updates and Total War: Shogun 2.

8

Any recurrence of the bluscreens post updates?

9

Not yet, but I’m not ready to call it fixed. I haven’t left my PC on very long since I did the updates – longest being about 36 hours. Both bluescreens before happened after the PC had been on for at least two days.

10

Keep your fingers crossed. And if it does reoccur, hopefully there will be more relevant data or errors with memory, power, etc.