Windows 8.1. Acer Aspire V.
My kid came to me about half an hour ago and reported that after typing his password to log into his account on my laptop, he got an error message that said something like “a device attached to this system is not functioning” on an otherwise blank black screen. This is how he describes it, I can’t attest to the accuracy. (Windows 8.1). He says he was presented with options “okay” and “exit,” he selected okay, and it took him back to the login screen. He says he tried to log in three times. (I’ve explained to him he should have come to get me the first time but that’s the past.) On the third attempt, the computer shut itself down when he hit “okay.”
When I came down, I attempted to power on the computer. It gave me the brand name screen, then at the point when it should have begun loading Windows, the screen just went black. I let it sit at the black screen for three minutes at least, and finally powered it down. After several minutes, I powered up again. It went to the black screen again, and I was just about to give up, when it loaded up Windows.
I logged into my own account–the administrator account–and attempted to view the error log. The first time, it would not load any logs. I forget what I did at this point, but it resulted in error messages about a “snap-in” not working. The event viewer would not shut down (due to a persistent error message) without me closing it in the task manager.
The second time I loaded the event viewer, it started up without a hitch. I found the event correpsponding to an abnormal shut-down during startup. But nothing I could see corresponding to the “device not functioning” error message.
Any idea what I need to be looking for? Your estimate of the probability that my computer is going caput soon? Do I dare try to log into my kid’s account?