Laptop Crashes Every Time I Turn It On

[Andrew_H]

I'm not too knowledgeable when it comes to computer stuff so I apologize in advance. Whenever I start up my laptop it crashes and I am faced with a blue error screen with a frown 😞 . After the computer crashes it automatically restarts and everything performs as normal. However, these past two days it has occurred just randomly out of the blue. Whenever I go into the reliability report and check what caused the crash it states, "Windows was not properly shut down," "The previous system shutdown at (time) on (date) was unexpected." There is also another error message saying, "windows audio device graph isolation," "stopped working." I am not to sure what to do to solve the issue. I have tried doing research on the issue but I am nervous that any steps I take on my own are going to make the problem worse. The only course of action I have taken myself was turning off fast boot up but it has not solved the problem. I believe this is a boot up issue because this morning when I started my laptop it crashed with a blue screen and then I was shown a black screen stating, "Boot Device Not Found" I greatly appreciate the help, thank you!

[WAWood]

@Andrew_H 

This last issue is often due to a failing drive. So, let's check that first, because if it is failing, it would need to be replaced and there is no point then in doing anything else until we confirm that.

If your PC is new enough to support UEFI, you can use these steps to test the hard drive: http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c00439024

If not, to check the drive you have to follow these steps:
1) Press Esc key repeatedly, several times a second, while rebooting the laptop. Do NOT hold the key down, just press it over and over.
2) Eventually, you will see an HP Startup Menu
3) Press the Function key for testing the hard drive (usually F2) and let it run.
If the drive checks out OK, then report that and I can provide you options for reinstalling Windows on your PC.

[Andrew_H]

@WAWood

Thank you for commenting and helping me on my path to resolving this issue. I ran several test to check the integrity of the hard drive and every test passed. I had to use the second option you listed to reach the HP Startup Menu. 

I have taken this laptop in to BestBuy previous because I was encountering similar issues. They performed a system reboot (not sure the technical term) that returned the laptop to the default factory settings. They reinstalled windows and all the necessities for me. This did seem to resolve the blue screen start up crashing issue but only temporary.

Any advice you have is greatly appreciated. Thank you for the continued help!