T42 frequent involuntary black screen, reboot since update

[STLEric]

As far as I can tell, this isn't related to the shutdown-when-you-move-it issue - that's never been a problem for me, and aside from the occasional inability to shutdown from explorer without just holding down the power button, my T42 has basically worked flawlessly for two years running. It doesn't immediately seem to be a hardware issue, as this has only come up since I last used System Update. It does, however, seem to be related to my video card.

First and foremost - revelant information:
T42
XP Home
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500

About three days ago, I'd gone through Windows Update, downloaded updates to Office 2003 and SQL Server 2005. No problems there, I had a few things that I wanted to continue on the next day before I would reboot, wuauclt.exe, as usual, *politely suggested* to restart about a hundred thousand times. No real problems. As I was wrapping everything up, I figured that as long as I was rebooting, might as well go through the Lenovo System Update as well. It downloaded updates for:

-Active Protection System
-The video card (again, Radeon 7500)
-BIOS
-UltraNav

As far as I'm aware, only the first two actually installed - I definitely saw the video card installer pop up, and APS isn't popping up in System Update. I'd unplugged the computer from the AC to do reading homework in another room, and when the BIOS installer came up, saying that it needed a full battery, I plugged it back in to wait until it was full again. A few minutes later, the screen just goes black and the system reboots. During the reboot, the screen stays black, there's HD activity, I assume the BIOS is updating (though afterwards, the BIOS update still appeared in System Update). About an hour later, I hit the power button, system starts, I'm told the system has experienced a "serious error," about a half hour later, no warning, I'm using Word 2003, HD starts chugging along, screen goes black, reboots as earlier, same "serious error":

BCCode : 1000008e BCP1 : C0000005 BCP2 : F7AFE610 BCP3 : B891886C
BCP4 : 00000000 OSVer : 5_1_2600 SP : 2_0 Product : 768_1

Repeat above multiple times, every 30 minutes or so. I turned off reboot on error under My Computer, and the end result is that the screen goes black, the HD and wireless activity lights eventually end, and the system goes silent except for the fan until I hold down power to turn it off, which happens much quicker than if the full OS were running. Ostensibly, the system and harddrive have shut themselves down - no amount of Fn/Fn + F7/Fn + space activity will bring everything back.

Three things, though, that I've found to reliably cause the black screen/shutdown are leaving the computer on screen saver for a few minutes and then moving the mouse, as I get the black screen about 20 seconds thereafter (I use the Windows port of Flurry), going to the screen saver panel of display properties when Flurry is the preview, and then leaving display properties, or going to PC Doctor 5 and doing the video card wireframe test.

Incidentally, my version of Flurry is the 1.1.1 where the preview is fixed for Radeons, Flurry and the graphics test have never caused me problems before, my system doesn't have to be doing something graphically intensive go through the black screen/reboot - a few times, I was just using Word or Firefox. When I set the screen saver to "Mystify" and left it on for awhile, it didn't crash shortly after returning from the screensaver, but I believe it still crashed after I'd been working with it for awhile.

When I use error reporting and go to the Microsoft webpages on the crashes, the information either says that the error report is corrupted, or that the video card caused a stop, having gone into an infinite loop (I'll remind everyone that while this sounds very similar to the T42-shutdown-when-I-move-it issue, it has shut down while I've been across the room from the computer, and it doesn't seem to be a physical issue, since the blank screen had never happened until exactly after this update.)

I've attempted multiple Windows system restores from checkpoints from the last two weeks or so, no luck on all of them - "no changes have been made to your system." I've tried rolling back the video card driver, but Windows can't find a previous driver. I've tried reinstalling the video driver, same problem. Software Installer says that I need to uninstall the current video driver to download an earlier version. Should I be worried about making things worse if I were to uninstall the ATI driver(s)?

And finally, just today, whenever I restart the computer, I get to the desktop, where the OS would usually start loading background and system tray processes, but the start button, quick launch bar, language bar, and system tray just stay blank blue boxes on the gray (classic) interface. I also can't open a folder, file, or Task Manager, or successfully go to a right-click menu - attempting any of those prevents me from attempting any of the others, although I can still move the (busy) cursor. About 10 minutes later, the start button finally appears, but again, is totally unusable and further locks up Explorer, leaving me only the ability to hold down the power button to repeat the process. So now I don't even get the chance to have unexpected shutdowns!

Right now, I'm in safe mode with networking. It's dandy, it's been hours and I haven't crashed yet. So, finally, does anybody have any idea what I should do? I don't immediately know where to go on my hard drive to look for an earlier video driver (the subfolder in C:\DRIVERS\ seems to be the same new update, I think), and the only earlier driver that I can find online is from the Italian ThinkPad support page (no idea if it would necessarily install Italian-language configuration software). Should I try installing the BIOS again on the off chance that it's actually a BIOS issue?

There's a critical SU hotfix in System Update as of today that "corrects System Update file management issues," but otherwise isn't very descriptive. Could that be related?

I shelled out the money for Adobe CS3, so obviously, I want to be able to continue to use graphically-intensive software, and I've been in the middle of applying for jobs, so it's certainly no picnic to have the system go dead in the middle of writing a cover letter. Help!

[visionviper]

If it is working fine in safe mode, I would say you just need to completely reinstall windows. It sounds like there is a driver/software conflict in Windows. Something that is loaded up when windows boots. Safe mode is working for you because it only loads up the minimum to run windows.

[STLEric]

If it is working fine in safe mode, I would say you just need to completely reinstall windows. It sounds like there is a driver/software conflict in Windows. Something that is loaded up when windows boots. Safe mode is working for you because it only loads up the minimum to run windows.

With the pricey activated software I have, I'm really hoping to avoid a reinstall if I possibly can. Though every logical avenue has failed me so far, I would imagine that if this only occurred immediately after the install of items from System Update, I'd have to imagine that the issue is probably reversible to some extent...

[GomJabbar]

Try System Restore from Safe Mode. Oftentimes that is all it takes. If you use Norton, see the following.

Message: "Restoration Incomplete. Your computer cannot be restored . . . " when you run Windows System Restore

[STLEric]

Try System Restore from Safe Mode. Oftentimes that is all it takes. If you use Norton, see the following.

Message: "Restoration Incomplete. Your computer cannot be restored . . . " when you run Windows System Restore

I don't use Norton, but I do use a version of Symantec, so that might have been the problem. It wouldn't really surprise me - it always seems like it's getting in the way of one thing or another. Thanks, I'll give it a shot!

[STLEric]

Try System Restore from Safe Mode. Oftentimes that is all it takes. If you use Norton, see the following.

Message: "Restoration Incomplete. Your computer cannot be restored . . . " when you run Windows System Restore

Well, started a restore, Windows initially wasn't loading anything but the cursor and wallpaper, killed tvtsched.exe in Task Manager (it was using 99% of the CPU), and the window came up saying the restore was successful. wuauclt.exe is back to bug me about the Office service pack, and everything, including the video card update, is back available for download on System Update.

I tried the video card test again on PC Wizard, and it finally completed the wireframe (and 3D) tests this time. Of course, as soon as the tests finish and I close PC Wizard, then the screen goes blank and the hard drive turns off again. Well, at least I can access the operating system outside of Safe Mode again. Hmm.

(Edit)
Returning to use from the Flurry screensaver killed it again, too. MS error reporting seems to be more consistent now in saying it's the ATI driver that's doing it. The page suggested that I download a driver update from Windows Update, but the fact that it's listed as a "November update from Lenovo" tends to make me think that it's probably the same driver that's on System Update.

[STLEric]

Hey, so I talked to phone support, and the guy suspected it's a motherboard issue. I might be wrong about it not being related to the moving the computer issue, because it has now crashed twice when it's been bumped, though it still reliably crashes after having done something graphics-heavy, sometimes without me as much as touching the computer (I've been using a USB mouse a lot lately).

It's looking like I'm sending the system in for a repair. What's generally the best way to back up one's hard drive to space on an external HD and maintain system settings and things related to the registry and such?

[Brad]

I would clone the drive but it may be hard to do if your system is down. It is not necessary to send your hard drive when you send your ThinkPad to EZ Serv. In fact I don't ever recommend sending in any extra parts when sending the system to the depot. Remove memory, hard drive, optical drive, and battery. This way there will be no chance of anything missing on return. Especially your valuable data.

There have been some here that have send in the hard drive only to have their ThinkPad lost in transit. It is hard to recover from a missing hard drive without a backup.

Brad

[STLEric]

I would clone the drive but it may be hard to do if your system is down. It is not necessary to send your hard drive when you send your ThinkPad to EZ Serv. In fact I don't ever recommend sending in any extra parts when sending the system to the depot. Remove memory, hard drive, optical drive, and battery. This way there will be no chance of anything missing on return. Especially your valuable data.

There have been some here that have send in the hard drive only to have their ThinkPad lost in transit. It is hard to recover from a missing hard drive without a backup.

Brad

Oh, no, the system's back up, it just kind of happens to crash and shut down sporadically, though thankfully, not quite as frequently as it was right after installing the update. What's the best way to clone the drive without settings and such messing up? Rescue and Recovery? I see instructions a few threads down for cloning using software that you'd buy, but I don't really have the extra money to spend at the moment...

And I'm assuming that I should probably do whatever I can with activated software (Adobe, Office, and such) to deactivate them as if I were putting them on another computer? Or would they possibly be intact if I'm putting the clone of the drive back on the same computer?

I'm definitely going to clone the drive, but on the chance that it happened to be some sort of hard drive issue (y'know, doubtful), I might as well send the HD along if they'll replace it.

[Brad]

If you are using the cloned drive in the same computer the activated software usually doesn't complain. So cloning a drive for backup or to upgrade your hard drive should not be a problem with your software.

I have used Acronis (which you can download a fully functional trial version that works for a few days free) with good success.

I have created boot media for Acronis and start the ThinkPad from the CD. A backup drive is connected via USB. In less than two hours (YMMV depending on how much data is on the drive) I have a working backup with no issues regarding activated software.

I usually test the cloned drive after the backup is complete and have not had a problem yet.

If the hard drive is bad or going bad let Lenovo know and they will send a replacement drive. Make a backup or clone with this replacement drive. I would never send a drive in with repair unless I didn't care if I never saw the drive again.

Brad

[STLEric]

Is it reliable to use the trial version of Acronis to create (or restore) a clone? Their website said something like they "don't suggest" using the trial version to create a clone.

[Brad]

AFAIK the trial version is full featured. Will only work for 15 days or so though.

Brad