I have a relatively new (Aug '05) Sony Vaio S460 that has a nasty habit of crashing. It follows a relatively predictable pattern in that it will crash soon after powering up, displaying a blue screen for a split second, before restarting. Afterwards, it is stable for days.

There is no apparent cause that I can discern. Sometimes it crashes at the login screen, almost immediately after powering up. Other times i'll have firefox open for a good hour before it blows. I haven't added any new hardware or software. It has done this out of the box (the situation was such that I couldn't return it to the place where i bought it).

I've run Microsoft's memory test utility overnight and it failed to find a problem.

Occasionally, it will freeze on the blue screen. The error from one of those times was :

0x00000D1 0x995D41E0 0x00000002

The errors aren't the same from what i've noticed. Most of the time the blue screen is visible for less than 1/2second, not enough time to get the error.

What perplexes me is the crash/stable dynamic. What could possibly cause it?

Thanks ever so much!

Unfortunately, your problem could stem from anything from a corrupted driver to a faulty piece of hardware. Please try to give us more information to go on if at all possible; the "Stop:0xD1" error really doesn't narrow things down much at all.

I have also seen that certain viruses and malware can cause a random reboot too. I would definetly boot in safe mode and run a virus scan. Also check msconfig -> Startup for anything suspicious. If you see a program name that you dont recognize, type it into google.

You might also want to run a chkdsk /R, I had a PC that did that and ran chkdsk and it went away. But this problem could be almost anything. I would also run a drive test on the hard drive, boot into Safe mode and see if you have any problems.

Sounds like a dodgy driver to me maybe the display driver my girlfriend had the same problem with crashing but remeber to always you the manufactures drivers and not microsoft one which are not always specifically written for the hardware you are using.

Yep - chkdsk and drivers are the best bets. Also cleaning out the machine with some spray-air and tightening screws could help. Good luck!