Happy Monday ppl :P

So i show up for work here, and our good old POS Sony Vaio from just around the stone age is broken.

Here is what it does. Boots up. Comes to (without pressing anything to make it do this) the windows did not shut down right, pick boot option screen.

So I tried windows normally. I get the windows logo, its loading, yay, BSOD!!. Flashed on there just long enough to tell me its broken, but not long enough to read anything. Ok so I try 'Last known good config' option. Same thing.

Ok lets try good old safe mode. Gets past loading mup.sys, says at the bottom 'Press Esc to cancel load of SPTD.sys" Then that goes away, sits for a few seconds, then reboots.

So me being the bright one I am, got my Ubuntu live CD. Booted up. With some help from google got the main windows hdd mounted & copied the Minidump folder off of the computer on to our server. Unfortunately the damn thing was empty >_< !

So here now I'm out of ideas. Spent some more time on google trying to see if either I could a) make the BSOD stay on the screen long enough to get the info off of it, but didn't have any luck b/c I can't get into windows. b) if not that, then get it to save a Minidump file so I figure out what the hell is wrong with this computer, and why it wanted to make my Monday so interesting.

Any help would be great. Going to go strangle a few customers... j/k

Hard drive failure... may still be good enough to use as a slave to recover important data, but the boot sectors apparently have flaked off the magnetic media material.
My guess from a variety of similar situatons... usually with Hitachi, Samsung, and Maxtor drives

hmm ok. Any way to figure out what the BSOD is saying or get a minidump?

I'll see if i can find my copy of spin right and run it.

EDIT
Not sure where my copy of spin right went, but i'm using the seagate disk check thing off the UBCD. I'll post back if it finds anything.

btw. hdd is a st320020a

Well raybay your a genius.

Ran the hdd check off the UBCD for Seagate. Found 11 errors, asked it to try to repair them. Rebooted, and go into windows. Promptly set it to NOT reboot after BSOD. Going to go buy a new hdd for it, also power supply as the fan as stopped working in the current power supply, and its acting funny.

Thanks for the hdd suggestion, didn't even think of that.