The Fault of ObjectBar?

did it really forsake me?

from WinCustomize Forums
Hello, well I'm back after a LONG week of comp recovery. *ahem* And now I shall sacrifice spelling/proper grammer to cut to the chase...

Two weeks ago I was just running Lotus on my laptop (for some quick digitizing), everything was normal. Being the stat-freak I am I take a quick break and check the taskmanager about every 10 mins to check on memory/handle use. Memory was fine, about 34% used (of my 1GB), and the handle count was at around 8,400, low enough. A few mins after that was where all my problems started...BOOM! (or some digital-equivalent sound) I get a bluescreen out of nowhere, there was no warning. Now I had had my laptop on for about 2 months, I understood that a bluescreen had to come sooner or later, so I simply left it off for a couple of days. I turned it back on, temp was normal, and about 45 mins later I get another bluescreen (with no explanation). I reboot again and this time about 10 mins pass before it does a hard shut-down (and then just repeated that every time afterwards). Yep, after that I never could get my laptop to stay on for more than 10 mins before a hard shut-down. So I decided to try Safe Mode, which worked just fine. I'd heard that IP could make some crashes, so I uninstall it, reboot...and another bluescreen (but no hard shut-down SCORE, PROGRESS! ) So back to Safe Mode it was for me...but I couldn't stay in it forever sadly...so to make a long story short I had to do a clean re-installation, simple right? I just load the backup that I made a month before all this and I'm sitting pretty...nope! I load the backup, reboot, and Windows refuses to initialize...wha? So....I basically lost 60GB of work in the process...ah well. Now WHY did I lose it?
I don't think it was the OS itself, in my experience with Windows I've never known it to be working perfectly one day, then just completely crash the next(or maybe I've just been lucky), and besides Safe Mode still worked fine. My thinking now is that ObjectBar is the culprit....one time I rebooted without loading it, and everything worked fine (until I got cocky, turned it on, and my comp decided to take a nice nap). I've read that OB has caused blue screens before...is this true? If so is there any hope for me? OB has proven to be VERY useful, but nonetheless do I have to abandon it altogether?

Haha, or am I impossibly far from the right answer?
3,103 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
What kind of backup image are you trying to restore from?
When you say that Windows won't initialize, how far did you get? Did you get past the BIOS screen?
Sometimes restoring from a backup image you lose your boot sector. Try loading the Windows install CD, select the Recovery Console, and type "fixmbr" (w/o the " " ) if that doesn't work you can type in "mkmbr"
And maybe don't run OB once you're back up and running. I've had some buggy things happen with OB, but never as bad as what you describe.
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Man, that's harsh-sorry to hear you lost so much stuff. I've never had OB cause a BSOD, but I have had it lock a machine up once in awhile. I've used it on my poor little Dell 2650 laptop (with 256M RAM) with few interruptions, (mostly using OB because this is a work PC running Win2K, and I like the features of an XP Start menu). The issue you're running into gives me the feeling that this is a possible HD failure. Second, maybe a bad memory module. I've never run a machine for 2 months myself & I'm not sure if that's part of the equation-I do know Laptops generate a lot of heat, so there may have been some sort of damage to a component that is heat-related. I agree with tjesterb, definitely don't put OB back on at least for awhile until you can get a bead on the problem. Best of luck!
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Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Sorry, I should have been a it more clear. To answer your questions:

1. I got past the BIOS screen, then the boot-screen would load, and soon afterwards I would get a bluescreen saying, "A fatal error occcured while attempting to initialize windows" The backup was a standard full-image made with the backup function in the system toold folder. It simply failed to load, even though I had used that same backup a few months earlier.

2. I did attempt to put in the default XP Pro CD my laptop came with, and after it had installed, I had the same problem as stated above, I never could get past the boot-screen (and it did not allow me to select any other options, such as the Recovery Console). I had to install the backup that came with my Dell, and that worked perfectly, no problems whatsoever.

3. Again, since I have a Dell, the BIOS comes with a nifty hardware analyzer. I've always known it to be very accurate (in the past I have had an HD failure, and the analyzer made that a fact right away). However I ran it and everything passed (HD, RAM, and the fan, which I kept a very close eye on in particular). It said the temp was 43C, which is always what I had known it to be.

4. Yep, as much as I like it, I won't be running it for awhile, I'll at least wait for an update.

5. Thanks for the help!