I'm getting the blue screen :(
Hey Ken, sorry I have been MIA for a couple of days here. I ran the GMER scan the same day you suggested it. It was taking a long time, so I left my computer running overnight and came back to it in the morning. It had finished the scan, but as I went to click on the "Save" button, I got the blue screen error. At the time, I was running late for class, so I didn't have the chance to write down the technical information there, and I just manually shut off the computer.
The next time I got on my computer, I did the Microsoft Error Reporting when it popped up, telling me I had a recovered from a serious error. The website page that eventually opened from Microsoft said that the error had something to do with a driver. Well, I wasn't sure what it could be, but I suspected that it may have had something to do with installing and uninstalling the software for an external hard drive from Seagate.
I ran Windows update next, and found that there were 8 updates (mostly Microsoft security updates) that needed to be downloaded (I'm not sure why they weren't brought to my attention by the update checker--they normally are). So, I downloaded them and restarted my computer.
Once the computer was up and running again, I decided to update my drivers via the hardware device manager. I went down the list of hardware devices on my computer, searching to see if there were any available updates, but I wasn't finding any until I got to my sound card. An updated driver was downloaded for my audio codecs, but as soon as that was done, I got another blue screen.
I shut off and restarted my computer yet again, this time going into safe mode as the blue screen prompt suggested. I used Windows System restore to revert back to the settings I had from the 10th (last Friday), but after the restoration was complete and I restarted the computer, I was sent immediately to the blue screen.
Well, at this point, I decided I should let you know what was going on. I'm using my laptop now to post here. The technical information given by the most recent blue screen, the one I get on starting the computer, says:
STOP: 0x0000007E (0xC0000005,0xA936E978,0xBA5031A4,0xBA502EA0)
I'm kind of lost right now as to what to do. I'm thinking of trying to restore to an even earlier point, but I wanted to see what you say about it. I'm hoping you can shed some light on the matter! Thanks again for your help!