FalconFour
New Member
- Joined
- May 3, 2009
$10 REWARD NOW: "Driver Power State Failure" BSOD -> Now hangs on startup
Aargh? Halp? This is crap...
Okay, so my laptop (Acer Extensa 4420, "designed for Vistaids") has been running Win7 x64 ever since the RC came out. It's all swell and all except for when it comes to drivers. Video driver runs like crap (ATI Radeon x1200 integrated). Something almost always goes wrong when it comes out of standby, but even worse with coming out of hibernate. Sometimes the computer will just "start up without the display". Yeah - the computer will be running, responding to keyboard input, and making noises (I can use Win+U to open Utility Manager and Narrator to "hear" my way around), but the screen will stay off. Amazingly, I can get the computer back by navigating remotely (using RDC) to Device Manager and disabling/re-enabling the display adapter.
So that's a little possible background on my current issue. So far I've had my computer do this three times now... for no apparent reason (no trigger, no previous symptoms, just working normally) it'll crash with a DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE error, then when I go to reboot, it'll hang at "Starting Windows" with the Windows logo still "waving". Yeah, it hangs - 10, 15 minutes and it's still stuck. I reboot, try "Startup repair", and it spends another 20-odd minutes doing essentially "nothing"... it doesn't find any problems (or at least doesn't know how to fix it). So, I try "last known good configuration" and it starts up fine. Why couldn't startup repair figure this out on its own...
But now I'm stuck. Last Known Good doesn't start up either. Maybe I'll try Safe Mode. But seriously: WTF? I've sure never had this many BSOD's in WinXP... and this computer wasn't even DESIGNED for XP! >.<
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I've got to get this thing running NOW! I'm now offering a reward to the person that gets my computer back online now. I've got a very stressful and packed day today that RELIES on this computer to work, and I can't have it offline like this, sitting at the "Starting Windows" screen!!
So $10 will be PayPal'd to the person that gets it back to the desktop again. I'm nowheres near a novice and I've already tried "everything". I don't have time to go home and re-image the computer from last night's backup. I'm willing to try anything you can throw at me, and I've got a whole slew of diagnostic tools (boot CDs, etc) at my disposal.
Any takers?
...
So yeah. Last ditch effort. I yanked one of my HyperX sticks of RAM (2x1gb). Now, guess what? It starts up fine...
WTF? I think that's a bug in the memory management system, for sure. The RAM passed memory tests fine, but I suspected to try that because some posts had mentioned removing RAM (if over 2gb). Now running with 1gb, it started up fine, no Safe Mode (wasn't starting up), no Last Good (wasn't starting up), no nothing. It started fine normally, when I took out just 1 matched stick of RAM.
Ah well. Nobody replied, so no $10... which is good for me since I'm at work, fixing PCs for $8/hour!
Aargh? Halp? This is crap...
Okay, so my laptop (Acer Extensa 4420, "designed for Vistaids") has been running Win7 x64 ever since the RC came out. It's all swell and all except for when it comes to drivers. Video driver runs like crap (ATI Radeon x1200 integrated). Something almost always goes wrong when it comes out of standby, but even worse with coming out of hibernate. Sometimes the computer will just "start up without the display". Yeah - the computer will be running, responding to keyboard input, and making noises (I can use Win+U to open Utility Manager and Narrator to "hear" my way around), but the screen will stay off. Amazingly, I can get the computer back by navigating remotely (using RDC) to Device Manager and disabling/re-enabling the display adapter.
So that's a little possible background on my current issue. So far I've had my computer do this three times now... for no apparent reason (no trigger, no previous symptoms, just working normally) it'll crash with a DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE error, then when I go to reboot, it'll hang at "Starting Windows" with the Windows logo still "waving". Yeah, it hangs - 10, 15 minutes and it's still stuck. I reboot, try "Startup repair", and it spends another 20-odd minutes doing essentially "nothing"... it doesn't find any problems (or at least doesn't know how to fix it). So, I try "last known good configuration" and it starts up fine. Why couldn't startup repair figure this out on its own...
But now I'm stuck. Last Known Good doesn't start up either. Maybe I'll try Safe Mode. But seriously: WTF? I've sure never had this many BSOD's in WinXP... and this computer wasn't even DESIGNED for XP! >.<
-------------------------------
I've got to get this thing running NOW! I'm now offering a reward to the person that gets my computer back online now. I've got a very stressful and packed day today that RELIES on this computer to work, and I can't have it offline like this, sitting at the "Starting Windows" screen!!
So $10 will be PayPal'd to the person that gets it back to the desktop again. I'm nowheres near a novice and I've already tried "everything". I don't have time to go home and re-image the computer from last night's backup. I'm willing to try anything you can throw at me, and I've got a whole slew of diagnostic tools (boot CDs, etc) at my disposal.
Any takers?
...
So yeah. Last ditch effort. I yanked one of my HyperX sticks of RAM (2x1gb). Now, guess what? It starts up fine...
WTF? I think that's a bug in the memory management system, for sure. The RAM passed memory tests fine, but I suspected to try that because some posts had mentioned removing RAM (if over 2gb). Now running with 1gb, it started up fine, no Safe Mode (wasn't starting up), no Last Good (wasn't starting up), no nothing. It started fine normally, when I took out just 1 matched stick of RAM.
Ah well. Nobody replied, so no $10... which is good for me since I'm at work, fixing PCs for $8/hour!
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