Some background on myself: I'm a 24 year old female computer technician/student. I previously worked for Circuit City, Best Buy and Staples as certified computer technicians at all three stores. I'm currently in college full-time, majoring in computer information systems. I am unfortunately, (technically) unemployed at the moment, but I do provide computer repair and web site services to people in the area to make extra money while in school and while looking for a more permanent and steady source of income. I'm currently preparing to take the CompTIA A+ Certification. I have been working with computers and other electronics my entire life and have a fair amount of knowledge about repairing and building computers and designing and maintaining websites but I am always learning and certainly do not claim to know everything, nor do I claim to be a professional or have a career in the IT field.
To the current problem: A friend of mine is in her first year of law school. About five or six months ago, she received a brand new laptop (Lenovo Ideapad Y460p) due to winning a scholarship for the computer and she had no choice of what brand or model. She has absolutely NO knowledge about computers or any electronics at all, resulting in myself having to set up and configure her new laptop.Up until about a month ago, her laptop was running great. All of the sudden (approximately a month or two ago), the laptop starting to freeze randomly that could only be fixed by holding the power button, shut down randomly, display BSoD messages (only the most recent I saw and took a picture of the message), and sometimes when she would try to power it on, the computer would turn on but nothing would appear on the screen although the button lights turn on and the hard drive and fan can be heard and felt vibrating but nothing appears on the screen and it just stays black so, again, the power button has to be held down until the computer shuts down. A few days ago, my friend came by and dropped off her laptop at my house to take a look at and try to fix because she has exams coming up and it's the ending of her first semester of law school so it is VERY important that her computer be running and working properly. I let her borrow one of my other laptops to use temporarily but she really needs her laptop for the end of this semester.
What I have done previously: When she originally got the laptop, I convinced her to purchase an external hard drive and set it up so the laptop would automatically perform weekly backups so thankfully all of her important files are backed up and I also set up cloud accounts for her important school documents to be backed up on the cloud as well [bleep] . I also installed and configured Kaspersky Internet Security on her laptop to make sure it's protected on the first day she got it and has it configured to continually update itself automatically. I also set up a "hot spot" shield since she is often connected to her university's open network to attempt to help protect her. Her laptop automatically installs all the Windows and other updates on a weekly basis and everything is regularly scanned, checked and updated.
What I have done since receiving the laptop a few days ago: The first time I even turned on the laptop it started to load and then suddenly a BSoD appeared and I used my camera to take a picture of the message (with one of the main titles including: BAD_POOL_HEADER) which I have attached to this post. I have ran check disk and no problems were discovered. I downloaded and ran SeaTools for Windows (as well as the DOS version) and the basic tests all passed but when I tried some of the more advanced tests, the computer froze and I had to restart and try again and kept getting the same results. I ran virus/malware scans and everything passed with no problems. I attempted to burn the DVDs (using the Lenovo OneKey recovery system) to do a system restore from factory default or previous system image and the computer froze before I could even start the burning of the 2nd DVD and this has happened every time I have tried it so I haven't even been able to start a system restore. The computer even freezes at times in Safe Mode. There has been no hardware or software changes when the error messages and freezing started besides my friend installing this software that her university requires her to download to take the final exams on her laptop, called "ExamSoft" ( http://learn.examsof...ftware-products ) but all of the other students in her university (and many other universities across the country use this software) so I wouldn't think that this ExamSoft software would cause a problem if no one else has a problem and everyone is using it.
I'm basically lost at this point and I found this website/forum and I'm really hoping someone on here can help me repair this for my friend because she only has a few days before her final exams for law school so it's really an important issue and needs to be fixed ASAP! Any information or suggestions or help of anytime that anyone can give me, I would greatly appreciate it!
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