Blue screens and crappy lenovo support

I keep getting these random blue screens from time to time. The blue screen really doesn't say much. it suggest that there is a driver error/driver conflict/hardware problem and i'm pretty sure that i have all the newest drivers. weirdly enough, half the times after the blue screen it kills my audio driver after the restart (so maybe its the audio driver?) and i have a hell of a time trying to reinstall the audio and modem driver on windows xp sp3 (the hotfix to install the audio driver only works with sp2, i have yet to find a work around )

In addition to this, the first few restarts after the blue screen is weird. for example, when i shut down, it "pretends" to shut down. like the screen is off, the power LED (circle with the z) is off but when i remove the power cord the battery and AC led is both on. The first time this happened, holding down the power button didnt work so i had to pull the battery, this restored my audio driver when it restarted

2nd time, i held down the power button for at least 30 seconds for a few times but then jabbing the power button worked but the audio driver refuses to return again. also the laptop refused to start up a few times. refused as in i press the power button and the screen wouldnt come on, and nothing happens.

3rd time, i had the same "fake" shutdown problem but after the laptop was off. i removed the battery and stuck it back in. this time my audio driver returned instantly. im not sure if its pure luck or if its because i replaced the battery.

I really don't know what to make of this. The blue screens are pretty random, it happened twice when im watching a video, twice when i'm playing a game on epsxe which is a playstation emulator, and a few times when i try to play EVE Online.

in desperation i contacted tech support for lenovo and they were basically worthless. the first thing they want me to do is to reimage my hard drive (is that the first thing they say to everyone when they get a call?) but when i told them that its pretty much a fresh install as i installed windows XP less than a month ago. they told me that they can't give me support because the laptop originally came with the OpenSUSE linux thing and what i essentially did was "replace the engine from a car" and that "there are certain parts in your laptop that was designed specifically for SUSE and not for windows xp so we can't give you support" (hes still using the car analogy).

that seems pretty bull**** to me. so basically the warranty for my laptop is useless unless if it completely dies or if i can recreate the problem in SUSE. I don't know i'm pretty peeved right now. i honestly expected better from lenovo. right now im downloading the thinkvantage software to see if i missed a driver update by accident.

 

why buy a laptop with linux to install winxp?

 

If you wanted Windows software support you should have paid for it.

 

why dont you follow the clean install guide and then install SP3 afterwords. see if you can recreate the problem in safemode or from a xp on disk.

 

when i brought my laptop i have an extra copy of windows xp and windows vista business from my school. i could of took the windows home basic vista (i dont remember xp being offered as one of the options) route but either way i would of either upgraded it to business or downgraded it to xp.

i did a clean install as soon as i got my laptop and that is when i installed the audio/modem drivers. i didn't install sp3 until a week or two later. the thing is that i don't want to have to uninstall sp3 and reinstall it every time it decides to blue screen on me.

i'm probably going to do another clean install tomorrow and hold off the windows update to see if it still blue screen.

 

I wouldn't call this crappy support. Lenovo will only support the configuration that your laptop was sold with. If you make the choice to install a different operating system then be sure you're capable of dealing with any issues that arise.

 

this story is almost funny. hate to laugh on your behalf craze, but usually linux users and windows experts ready to move on. being in support role myself, i can imagine what its like for them. the car analogy fits, but is probably played out. there are probably some people here with the same setup running XP natively, im sure if you asked nice someone would give you the details of their working drivers.