Red screens of death even without Vista

May 24, 2007 2:23 AM

Diagnosing multicolor screens of death

I'm running Windows XP tablet PC edition. Over the past month, I've had two red screens of death and, just now, a friendly sort of off-white one. By screen of death, I mean that the entire screen just goes blank and I can't get any response through mouse or keyboard (including ctrl-alt-del.) There aren't any error messages or diagnostics, which you normally do get with a BSOD.

After I reboot I try looking through the event log, but I don't see anything remotely relevant. What diagnostic tools can I use to figure out what's going on?

(I found some previous questions on gray screens of death, but they ended up being hardware problems related to the screen. Since this only happens with Windows, which I don't usually run, I don't think that's it.)

posted by lullabyofbirdland to computers & internet (2 comments total)

For the record, this isn't a case where the desktop just freezes and displays the background color, since that's neither red nor white.
posted by lullabyofbirdland at 2:27 AM on May 24, 2007

Almost certainly a hardware fault. If it's within warranty, take it in for repair.

If not, check out the heat dispersing capabilities. Has one of the internal fans broken? Does it seem to get abnormally hot?

Check the RAM. If possible, remove some memory modules and then add them back in until the problem returns.

And, of course, get the latest drivers for everything, especially the graphics adapter.
posted by humblepigeon at 2:34 AM on May 24, 2007