So my home laptop has started sending me to a blue error screen which says "KERNEL STACK INFLOW ERROR" about five minutes after boot-up, but seems to run fine in safe mode. Advice?
One of two things: 1) Either you have a bad memory chip or 2) You might have an error in your volume Boot to a command prompt and type chkdsk ...this will look for volume errors
Has anything recently changed on your laptop? Did you run Windows Update or install a new driver or a new application? A conflict of drivers can also cause a BSOD. Get into safe mode and check the event logs. See if there is anything that indicates a video, audio, or other hardware conflict. If so, you'll need to troubleshoot the driver/hardware that is causing the problem. Usually changing the driver to an older or new version does the trick. If an application wrote over a critical file, simply uninstalling that should so the trick or getting a patch. Good luck.
The funny thing is I haven't installed anything on it lately. It has been making weird clicking noises near one of the expansion slots though - I think I dropped it and that's to blame. It's an old laptop and I'm just rtying to keep it alive till the end of the year.
I fixed it, chkdsk worked. I think I did a registry cleanup a while ago and probably messed it up. Thx to codell.
If you heard the clicking, would definitely still advise you to do a backup *immediately*. You may have fixed it temporarily. I've definitely had random "clicking" and failures...followed by periods of up to a month of no problems after some fixing...and then an ultimate, unrecoverable death. (of the hard drive)
Keep running chkdsk every few days. If it continues to find new problems, that is a SURE sign the hard drive is on its last legs.
It is the infamous Windows blue-screen-of-death. This was a common problem in Windows 95, 98, NT, ME, 2000, and was supposed to disappear in XP. However, it does happen in rare circumstances when there is a corrupted driver. Don't worry, everything should be fine with your laptop.
Next time it happens, take a picture with your camera--of the monitor screen, not of you in your pantalones. Post it here.