Hi everyone

Just recently, my computer has been acting weird. I'm bad at explaining so I'll try to outline the problems instead.

- Takes longer to boot up. I've waited 10 minutes for my laptop to boot up and then I press and hold power button until it reboots. When I do that, it seems to boot up faster. I get two options at start up when I do that: Run this start up problem finder or regular start up. Either way it seems to start up faster.

- Will randomly lock up. I could be downloading a song or something and it will lock up causing me to go through the long restart process.

- Just now, I was running a virus scan and while it was running, I went to shower. During the time I was in the shower, my computer restarted on it's own. I walk into my room to see my computer checking my disk drives at start up. When I finally was able to log in, windows said the following files caused the reboot:
/Windows/Minidump/Mini0503093.dmp
/Appdata/Local/Temp/WER-241146-0.sysdata.xml
/Appdata/Local/Temp/WERC090.tmp.version.txt

For the record:
- I have Windows Vista with the latest service pack.
- I use Avast! anti-virus
- My laptop is a Dell Studio 7.

If you need any more info, let me know. I just want to have this figured out.

I would suggest re running the anti-virus and this time watch it as it scans. This will take a while so I suggest doing something else on the computer while it scans.

Also if no viruses are found you can try CCleaner and Registry Defrag.

My computer worked absolutely fine in safe mode which is how I was able to run it. There were no viruses found on my computer and I ran both SuperAntiSpyware and MalwareBytes and I only had a few tracking cookies and those were removed. However, when I was running the virus scan, it couldn't scan three files and they weren't any files that were important(one was a video file). It had something to do with the memory.

Before that, after my computer got the blue screen of death(i was not able to get the code, however I did copy down the error report). I let windows try to find a solution to the problem and it said it could possibly be the memory. Here's the error report for the second crash:
Problem Event Name: Blue Screen
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Additional Info:
BCCODE: 77
BCP1: 00000001
BCP2: 00000000
BCP3: 00000000
BCP4: 88B2FC70
OS Version: 6_0_6001
SP: 1_0
Product: 768-1

Files:
\Windows\Mindump\Mini050309-02.dmp
\Appdata\Local\Temp\WER-90152-0.sysdata.xml
\Appdata\Local\Temp\WER8E2B.tmp.version.txt

Before I started Safe Mode, I ran one of Window's Memory Tests, and it said that there were no problems found with my memory. However, if there was nothing wrong with my memory, then it would have been able to scan those three files, right? I did delete those files though.

I will run the CClean and Registry Defrag though if it speeds up my computer. I also am thinking about cutting out the amount of programs that start up when I log on since my computer ran flawlessly in Safe Mode.

UPDATE I have ran chkdsk twice and both times during step 5 it stops at 29%. It did fix two drive errors though. I am thinking about just reformatting the hard disk and then reinstalling windows to see if that does anything to help solve the problem.

Also I ran CCleaner and RegistryDefrag, and while they did speed my computer up, it still locks up but not as bad. However, I am having Ccleaner wipe my harddisk and it still hasn't stopped or anything, so I am confused as to what to do other than reformat and reinstall. It would be great to get some help.

Have you checked Dell to see if there is a fix ?
Have you tried updating the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager ?
Are there any yellow excalmation marks in device manager ?

You are the one sitting there, try the above

doc6558