[someothergrl16]

I have a Dell Vostro 230 with Windows 7 Professional. I recently had to reinstall Windows 7 after my children installed some kind of computer demon on it and I couldn't get anything to work. After reinstalling the OS, I had a problem downloading updates. I fixed that problem, and now I am having a problem with unexpected shutdowns. I get the blue screen, the computer restarts itself, and I get a message saying there was an unexpected shutdown and I'll be notified when there is a solution. On occassion, I'm also having problems shutting down and starting up my computer: it freezes in the middle of the process. Additionally, when the computer goes into the screen saver mode, after I haven't used it for 10 minutes or so, it freezes on a page that just has the background picture. The task bar isn't visible and the only option I have is to shut it down with the power button.

I would really appreciate some direction on how to fix these problems.

Thanks in advance,
Maria

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How did you reinstall Windows 7?

Did you use the Recovery partition on the hard drive, Manufacturers recovery DVD or a Windows 7 install DVD?

Are all the drivers installed? Does Device Manager show any yellow or red marks.

[Ztruker]

How did you reinstall Windows 7?

Did you use the Recovery partition on the hard drive, Manufacturers recovery DVD or a Windows 7 install DVD?

Are all the drivers installed? Does Device Manager show any yellow or red marks.

[someothergrl16]

Hi, and thank you for your reply.

I reinstalled with the reinstallation DVD for windows 7 professional. It's the disk that arrived with my computer. There is also a driver disk, but I'm not sure which drivers need to be installed. I checked the device manager and there are no yellow or red icons or any other icons that tell me there is a problem with a driver.

Since my first post, I started getting the blue screen crash window as soon as I start the computer up, so now I'm in the process of trying to eliminate programs in the start up menu as the possible cause. I've disabled all the programs in the start up menu and I'm just starting to enable them one by one to see if I can isolate the problem. Just after disabling all of them, I tried starting firefox from a desktop icon, without enabling it in the startup menu, and I got the blue screen again. I'm using explorer with no problem, so I might have to uninstall firefox after I'm done checking the startup menu.

Is there a program I can use to check to see if windows 7 was properly installed?

[Ztruker]

No, no program does that unfortunately.

I would try doing the install again, then install all the drivers from the Driver DVD, or at least the network and video drivers. As soon as you get that done, see if you can do a Windows Update via Control Panel. Do it 2 or 3 times until all updates, including Service Pack 1, have been installed.

Test for a bit. If all is well then continue with software install.