Blue Screen

Today a user brought in her Dell D620 laptop. She said that she got a blue screen
and then she was turned the computer off and then it would not restart.

Laptop Overheating

She handed me the laptop and it was very hot, probably the hottest I have ever seen a laptop get. I opened the lid and the laptop was still on and the wireless was on also. The unit was on but there was no image on the screen. The user stated that she put the laptop away in her bag after the blue screen until she could bring it in. The laptop had been in the bag for about 6 hours, running, with no ventilation. This is bad.

I took the battery out of the unit and let it cool off. I removed the hard drive to see if I could get any data off the drive with Norton Ghost but I could not even get the disk to power up.

Old Freezer Trick

I tried the freezer trick where you wrap a hard drive in plastic and set it in the freezer for a while then try to access the data again. Well, after about an hour and a half, I took the hard drive out and it fired up and I got a Ghost image.

No Backup!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the user does not have her data backed up and she was very worried when I told her the hard drive had failed.

A new hard drive is on the way and the user’s data is safe and ready to be put on the new hard drive.

What caused the failure? Well the blue screen may have been an indicator of hard drive problems. But I think that in this case the heat caused the failure of the hard drive.

Lessons and Tips

• If a computer starts getting blue screens or other errors, take it in to have it serviced.
• Back up data.
• Back up data.
• If the computer will not shut down;
  • hold the power button down for about 10 seconds
  • unplug the power
  • remove the battery
• Do not put a running computer in a bag.

And did I mention to back up your data on a regular basis?

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