Sony Vaio Laptop Issues

A friend of mine is having me troubleshoot his Vaio before he calls the geek squad, as they were telling him his problem was a virus and that the fee would be $300+. So far it isn't looking like a virus to me, but rather a hardware issue, but I am no hardware expert so I thought I'd ask for some help.

The issue is that the laptop has been blue screen/restarting, at first seemingly at random, but now it seems like it only restarts during virus/spyware scans. Trying to stop spybot mid-scan to kill a few things before the restart just results in a blue screen. So far AVG has been able to take out a few things, and I stopped an Ad-Aware scan and got a few things, but trying it again got another blue screen.

So at this point I am stumped. I looked into some old forums about Vaio issues but none of them really fit this situation.

Specs:

Sony Vaio Model PCG-7R2L
OS: Windows XP w/ SP2 [Media Center Edition]
CPU: Intel Core2 [Centrino Duo] T5600 [1.83 GHz]
RAM: 1GB

 

Does it just go to a complete,empty blue screen> Or does some codes come up? Like 0x0000000000? At this moment I believe it's a software issue....for now.

 

In order to help you troubleshoot this, we need the actual error codes referred to above and any file names or error messages that may accompany the error. As an example:
STOP: 0x000000EA
KERNEL_IN_PAGE_FAULT in win32k.sys
I made up the error number, but you get the idea; this is just an example of what an error code & message might look like. There isn't always a message or file name listed, but there is ALWAYS a number...

 

You probably fixed or trashed that Vaio PCG-7R2L but others may find this thread on a Google search, so I posted this.

Another thought - it could be overheating - make sure the cpu fan is running and not clogged with dust. It only takes a couple minutes to start randomly crashing when the processor is burning up - blue screens, random reboots, etc.

Also remove and reseat the memory SODIMM chips - inspect the contacts to see that they're clean - use a pencil eraser lightly to shine the contacts and wipe them with alcohol, let dry, then reinsert.

Burn a copy of UBCD for Win on another PC, then boot from it to see if it works and use the AV and other utils to check out the Windows installation on the C drive.

F**k the Geek Squad - they don't know Jack. :cool