BSoD Crash Dump and Boot Loop

Question

The other day, I was playing a game for about 10 minutes when my computer overheated, because it was a hot day. I left it to cool down but when I came back to it at night, I turned it on to see it's in a boot loop. I see the microsoft logo as usual, then a bsod for a few seconds that says crash dump, and then only 2 options to either windows startup repair or start windows normally. If I start normally, the same happens, and if I try startup repair, it says it is unable to fix the problem automatically. Also, when I first tried it, it took about 40 minutes to check, but now it only checks it for about 2 minutes, before it says the same thing.

I'm unable to access safe mode at all, and my laptop is 4 years old, so I don't have the recovery disk it would have come with. It's also Windows 7, and I haven't installed anything new on it recently that could be causing the loop.

My first priority is to access my files that I need to salvage off the hard drive. Then, if it's possible I'd like to know how to fix my laptop.

Also, I'd really appreciate it if it can be explained in simple steps, I'm not really tech savvy and this is the first time it's happened. Any advice at all is appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

Try last known good configuration:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/using-last-known-good-configuration