i had a problem with a win 7 startup issue which was really weird. on the computer, when he starts up, it is normal until it gets done loading. after it is up, the background changes to purple, and the icons get scrambled. then it bluescreens, and the
words are scrambled as well. when it reboots, it is normal, sometimes for hours. it only happens on cold boot, at least an hour. this all started three weeks ago, he had a video card that went bad after playing a game on steam. he said he replaced it with
the same model, and the one i saw was an nvidia, pci e card with an asus board and fan, gave the part number as ggd67-69001. he said that after that, it started to get the symptoms above. it is an hp pavillion d4995t, originally shipped with vista, he bought
7 home premium.
when i got there, he replicated the issue and i ran bluescreenview and in the log it had a bc code 124, bcp1 0x00000000, bcp2 0x85b4401c, bcp2 0xb2000040, bcp3 0x00000080. it said halmacdi.dll was causing the issue. i tried to update the drivers from the nvidia site and it kept wanting me to pay for a dll updater. as he paid hp $200 for me to come out there, this was not going to happen. i got on the phone with hp tech support, he advised to run the hp diagnostics on reboot. i did this and they all passed. after that, i thought maybe it was a setting in the bios, so i found that it was set to hard drive mode raid. i thought i found the problem, so i changed it to ahci and rebooted. then it bluescreened before the logo came up. i wnet in and changed it to ide, and it did the same thing. the only way it will boot is in raid. i never did crack the case, because when i called back to hp, it was coming up on the two hours i was supposed to be there, and he said to reload the os. i made sure he had a backup and did that. i put all his stuff back and advised him to power it down and wait two hours and see if it happened again.
well, guess what? it happened again. i am lost on this one, it can't be a hardware issue or it wouldn't work at all. i think it was drivers, but i can't find them anywhere. has anyone heard of this? i would like to help this guy out, he is really nice, and i've never seen a more well maintained computer. he cleans it out every 6 months, not a spec of dust on the fan. thanx.
eta: after searching around in more depth, i found that it may be the drivers. the thing is, i can't pin down the exact error message, some fit, some are close, but i can't find all of them together. and i don't have the computer here, i told the guy i could check around some forums and see if i can help him out next week. if anyone has any ideas, i could pass them along.
when i got there, he replicated the issue and i ran bluescreenview and in the log it had a bc code 124, bcp1 0x00000000, bcp2 0x85b4401c, bcp2 0xb2000040, bcp3 0x00000080. it said halmacdi.dll was causing the issue. i tried to update the drivers from the nvidia site and it kept wanting me to pay for a dll updater. as he paid hp $200 for me to come out there, this was not going to happen. i got on the phone with hp tech support, he advised to run the hp diagnostics on reboot. i did this and they all passed. after that, i thought maybe it was a setting in the bios, so i found that it was set to hard drive mode raid. i thought i found the problem, so i changed it to ahci and rebooted. then it bluescreened before the logo came up. i wnet in and changed it to ide, and it did the same thing. the only way it will boot is in raid. i never did crack the case, because when i called back to hp, it was coming up on the two hours i was supposed to be there, and he said to reload the os. i made sure he had a backup and did that. i put all his stuff back and advised him to power it down and wait two hours and see if it happened again.
well, guess what? it happened again. i am lost on this one, it can't be a hardware issue or it wouldn't work at all. i think it was drivers, but i can't find them anywhere. has anyone heard of this? i would like to help this guy out, he is really nice, and i've never seen a more well maintained computer. he cleans it out every 6 months, not a spec of dust on the fan. thanx.
eta: after searching around in more depth, i found that it may be the drivers. the thing is, i can't pin down the exact error message, some fit, some are close, but i can't find all of them together. and i don't have the computer here, i told the guy i could check around some forums and see if i can help him out next week. if anyone has any ideas, i could pass them along.
