Cosmos ii keeps restarting

[Nick280]

I received my new Cosmos ii on Thursday and everything was fine until Sunday evening when it started to reboot. It will be working fine until the screen goes black for a second or two, then I get a blue screen with a message (which is too long to read) before it carries on restarting. It's not overheating. It appears to be completely random. Sometimes I'll have it on for over an hour before it does it, sometimes just five minutes. My AV didn't detect anything. I can't see any obvious causes to the problem.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Laptop specs:

Chassis & Display Cosmos Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4710MQ (2.50GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM) 8GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 840M - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
2nd Graphics Card NONE
Memory - Hard Disk 240GB KINGSTON V300 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (450MB/R, 450MB/W)
2nd Hard Disk NONE
mSATA/M.2 SSD Drive NONE
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 6x BLURAY ROM, 8x DVD ±R/±RW & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE
Memory Card Reader Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N CARD + BT 3.0 (RTL8723BE)
Wireless Router/HomePlugs NONE
USB Options 3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Battery Cosmos Series 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (48.84WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor 1 x UK Power Lead & 90W AC Adaptor
Keyboard Language COSMOS 17" SERIES UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD (NON-BACKLIT)
Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence

 

[mrducking]

it would help if you could upload the dump file of the error, but meanwhile you could try reinstalling drivers, especially those related with something you may have installed or not when all this started

 

[ubuysa]

If you take a look in the Windows Event Viewer log you should be able to see the error code that caused the BSOD. If you can (it will be in the Critical section) give us the error code and we'll be able to offer more targeted advice.

You might also try running the system file checker. Open a command prompt and enter the command "sfc /scannow" (without the quotes). It will take a while to run but if it shows any errors that cannot be corrected you may be looking at a Windows reinstall.

 

[Nick280]

Hi everyone

Thanks for your help. I tried running the system file checker, but unfortunately it doesn't stay on long enough to complete. I looked at the Event Viewer and took a photo of the details, I'm not sure if it will be any help though, but it was the best I could get.

Most of the bluescreen messages contain one of the following three phrases
pnf_list_corrupt
memory_management
special_pool_detected_memory_corruption

a quick look online shows that these seem to have something to do with RAM. I've also noticed that it's quite sluggish. It can take a while to start up, and searching for something in the start menu can take several seconds.

I reckon I'll have to send it back to PCS. I emailed them yesterday, but no response so far...

 

[mrducking]

dont email them, call them
they take ages to answer mails
if you are international (like me) use the online chat in work hours
and it seems you have a defective RAM

 

[ubuysa]

BCC 0xC1 (193) is most probably a RAM error, you can see the details at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff560183(v=vs.85).aspx. I would recommend downloading Memtest from http://memtest.org and running that.

To run Memtest download the .zip file from http://memtest.org, extract the .iso file from the archive and burn that .iso file to a CD or DVD, then boot from that CD/DVD and Memtest will start running. Leave it running for as long as you can, overnight at least but 24 hours is better. If it find any errors at all pull RAM cards and run it again on each card in turn.

You'll see from the BCC explanation that your parameter 4 (0x32) is also driver related, so it's possible it's not RAM but a faulty or badly installed driver. Have you updated drivers recently?