More Awesome Than You!

Every few days (about once every week, perhaps) my laptop starts showing blue screens saying physical memory dump is starting. After a couple of seconds, the computer restarts. This occurs more and more frequently over the next 48 hours, until eventually the screen beeps, freezes and a blue screen with illegible white lines appears. The computer then re-freezes.

To fix the problem, I tend to run an error-check, which doesn't fix the problem, uninstall AVG 8.0, which doesn't work and then defrag, which does fix the problem.

Any suggestions as to the real cause of the problem? This has been happening for about two months.

It also occurred a few times a year ago, and when sent to IT services, they said there wasn't a problem. Since then, the laptop got windows xp reinstalled due to an unrelated problem, and two months later, this started (about the same time, the original virus software ran out of date and was removed (properly) by me.

Any help greatly appreciated as I can't afford the £30 handover fee for professional support. Nor do I wish to get professional support: it tends not to be much use.

How much memory do you have left? 

I have 1Gb of memory, half of which cam with the laptop. I'm reluctant  to buy more though, as to upgrade further, I'd have to discard one of current memory cards and replace it. (Thus having to buy more memory than necessary)

There are lots of causes for a physical memory dump. Driver errors, software fault, even faulty RAM. The first thing I'd do if I were you is to check the event logs to see what errors are recorded there.

How do I do that?

Start/Control Panel/Performance and Maintenance/Administrative Tools/Event Viewer   ;)

Interesting. Another, probably related problem occurred. The computer  refused to work properly. Before the log on screen, a notice appeared informing me that an application can crashed. Seeing as the application was called avg(insert three random letters here), I assume the problem is caused by AVG. Having uninstalled AVG since, I still have 17 files relating to avg on the laptop. The locations of said files are in the folders:

C:/WINDOWS/prefetch
C:/WINDOWS/temp
C:/WINDOWS/pchealth/ERRORREP/UserDumps

Can I delete any of the files/is AVG properly uninstalled/if not, what do I do now?

EDIT: okay, having installed a different virus software, I spent two hours playing solitaire, listening to itunes and during this time ran a virus check. The blue screen then reappeared. WTF? Please someone more awesome than me explain?

Have you run a memory test on the physical RAM? Memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/) is a good one. Burn it to a CD or copy it to a floppy, use that CD/floopy to boot with and run all the tests. If there's any errors generated by the tests, then you need to buy some more ram. If you don't get any errors, then it's probably not RAM.

Do you have a monitor on your computer checking for heat and hard drive lifespan? I don't have any good links for those types of utilities, try the support section of your computer manufacturer.

Interestingly, by changing virus software (again) I can avoid the suckROM problems without removing suckROM from sims 2. However everything's hopefully working perfectly now. *crosses fingers*

...oooooor you could just remove SecuROM, which does nothing positive for your system and often does negative things.

Too much effort. (Yes, I know, I suffer from terminal laziness).

It strikes me as a lot less effort than this changing-of-the-programs dance you seem to be doing.

Getting rid of securom takes up to half an hour, if you have to download Regdelnull, read all the instructions, and are using dial up to do all this.  The actual process takes only a few minutes, likely no longer than the time it takes to load the game from desktop.

You are talking false economies here.

While SecuROM is probably the cause of your problems, it would still behoove you to check for problems with your hardware. If something is about to fail on your computer, it's really best if you know about it as quickly as possible.

Thanks Jesslla, I'm now searching for help with hecking the hardware. I know the hard drive is dubious: there's problems with an older computer in the house with the same make of hard drive, but this one's been recently  (nearly a year ago, actually) checked by an IT person while trying to fix a completely different problem, so hopefully it's okay. The memory's okay. Sadly, if something fails, the laptop's doomed. There's not much replaceable parts worth replacing: better value is to replace the whole laptop: something I can't afford.

As for securom, I don't trust my computer skills to do it properly without wrecking something else: all my computer knowledge is self-taught, unless you count ECDL, (which I tend not to: it's not worth much) and an IT course I did years ago (even worse, it just taught me to touch type).

Thanks everyone for your help and advice: it's greatly appreciated.

What antivirus did you install, the second time after AVG?