my laptop keeps crashing recently

Question

My laptop (Acer Aspire 4937G) keeps crashing recently (already the third or fourth time)

The crashes seem to occur after I have uTorrent installed (my uTorrent is running while the computer is on of course) but of course uTorrent may have nothing to do with it.

I was wondering with just this "crash screen" could anyone make any sense out of what may be wrong with my laptop?

(Windows Vista Home Premium sp2)

It tells me to insert boot disc and press any key but of course i didn't insert a boot disc and I simply hold the power button off and on the laptop again.

Answer 1

That screen is a standard boot screen, and is simply going through the options of booting through your network cards (i.e. tring to get a network filesystem to boot from).

The line that states "No bootable device" is showing that your hard drive has apparently vanished.

Powering off the system for a short while and then back on and it then working means that it is a fault that is most likely related to the length of time or type of use that the hard drive is receiving.

My bet would be that your hard drive is failing, and your use of uTorrent is probably accelerating the problem.

uTorrent means the hard drive works for longer and harder (constant data to/from the drive) and so the hard drive is probably overheating. This causes the hard drive controller to crash and on reboot it is not properly reset. A full power off and back on works because the power is removed and allows the drive to start up normally.

I have had drives fail in this manner in the past.

I would recommend replacing that hard drive as soon as possible.

Answer 2

Crashes of Windows in your case are most likely due to failing drive or ram drive. Use Ultimate Boot CD to boot and test your HDD and RAM which are very common to break first in laptops. Unless you played with BIOS settings (boot order, disabling hdd) this is most likely the cause. Also please remove any USB connected devices such as FlashDrives / External HDD's. I've seen few times when my laptop wouldn't boot due to such device being connected.

Answer 3

As Nivas already mentioned, this looks like your boot order has changed. But if your first boot device is CD-Rom and there is no disc inserted, it should automatically take the HDD to boot. The screen you provided shows a failed Network-boot. It´s trying to boot from a network ressource that isn´t there. Try to disable Network-boot in your BIOS. And it isn´t necessary that you changed something. I experienced a chenge in boot order without changeing it myself. I don´t know why, but this happens.

Answer 4

Has your boot order changed recently?

Boot order is the order in which BIOS scans for bootable devices. If a CD ROM is set as the first boot device, then it is possible that the BIOS is waiting for the CD Rom to be inserted.