Strange Computer Problem!

[ray96]

Hi all! I am having one of the most strangest problems I have ever seen! Read on...

I have a Dell Latitude laptop w/ Windows 2000 Professional, with Service Pack 4. It has 256MB RAM, Pentium 3 650MHz Processor, and a 20GB Hard Drive. I have only had it almost 2 months. It's just about 2 years old.

Anyway, I was playing around on it one night; just browsing some CDs, and installed the .NET Framework 1.1. It worked great that night! But the next night, things started to happen...

I was working on the computer. I left the computer a few minutes. When I came back, it started making a loud high pitched noise through the speakers. I just about plugged my ears it was so loud! The computer froze then. I had to turn it off then back on.

After I turned it back on, it worked good for about 20 minutes. Then the screen turned blue, and this message appeared on the screen:

*** STOP: 0x00000023 (0x000E00AB, 0xBEF64A80, 0xBEF64608, 0xBFF56080)

FAT_FILE_SYSTEM

*** Address BFF56080 base at BFF45000, DateStamp 3e25bb17 - Fastfat.sys

Beginning dump of physical memory

Physical memory dump complete. Contact your system administrator or technical support group.

The computer rebooted. I was able to work for awhile longer, then it did it again. It did that 2 times after that. I left it off for the weekend.

The following Monday, I turned it on again to see if it was going to work again. The system got very warm, (warmer than usual) and the fan kept coming on more.

After awhile, that message came up again.

It has NEVER overheated since then!

Sometimes the power button would fail to work when I turn it on. The light comes on for a few seconds, then cuts off. I see nothing on the screen when this happens, just except the screen will flash just a little.

Sometimes the computer would lock up, and the top part of the screen would turn to weird colors. Other times it would just lock up, without anything extra on the screen, and without a noise of any sort.

What makes this problem stranger, is that sometimes the computer would do those things when I would just tap on the surface of the laptop with my finger!

The computer has never been dropped, and it is not connected to the internet. It does not have a floppy drive, or a CD Writer----just a CD/CDRW Reader. The computer has been a little joulted, but not bad. Shouldn't these laptops be able to take a little pressure?

Here are the things I have tried: (some of them might sound strange)

Disabled the Touch Pad

Changed the CPU Speed to minimal

Turned SpeedStep off

Uninstalled .NET Framework

Turned the system log recording off

The first 3 things I did in the BIOS Setup.

Some of you might remember this post from a few days ago, but I decided to write it again because I had new things to say.

I would appreciate any help! I need this computer desperately for my school.

[rightcoast]

This is most likely either a problem with the hard drive or your RAM.

You should press F8 as Windows is about to boot, Choose the Safe Mode with Command Prompt, if a second menu appears choose the operating system and press Return to boot to Windows 2000. Then use the full chkdsk command...

C:\>chkdsk /f /r

...this will fix the C: drive/volume, if possible, do a surface scan, and attempt to recover data, telling you if it finds errors along the way. You may be prompted to restart to kill any processes before it will run. The scan can take a long time, but should be done immediately to prevent futher file system corruption.

You should still run memtest86 to test your RAM as the possible root of the problem. You can find it here:

http://www.memtest86.com/

Good Luck!