Viewing Video Causes Blue Screen

I have had my computer blue screen and shut down while viewing video a couple of times in the last 2 months. It says something about the "ADM driver has stopped responding." I think it says ADM, but the information flashes quite quickly so I am not sure, I know it is 3 capital letters and the first is A.

You can hear the video but the screen goes completely black, it tries to come out of it but eventually it starts making this noise like it's stuttering (click, click, click - like it's stuck.) Then you get the blue screen and everything goes down...

I have attached 2 print screens of the info I get when the computer comes back on and notifies me there has been a shut down.

I have installed all the latest drivers and BIOS (10). I did so in the proper order, as I know in regard to the VBIOS - the order was important - I followed all the instructions in the sticky thread.

The only other weird thing - in print screen 3 you see that the Fast Access Video Pass is disabled. It disables itself every now and again and I have to go in and enable it again... I have no idea why that happens, or even if it means anything...

I do not like when the system shuts down improperly... but have no idea why this is happening or how to fix it. A complete reinstall may be in order, but before I consider that, I was wondering if anybody had any suggestions...

Thanks,
Sandy

 

I've been having almost the same issue with the 11.2/11.3 ATI drivers. Whenever I try to play video files (either Blu-ray movies or MPEG movies), I randomly get the display driver crash. I don't get the BSOD as the driver manages to restart successfully, but the other symptoms are the same.

I've gone back to using an older driver for now. I'll put on the 11.4s tonight to see if they make a difference.

(And in case anyone asks, yes, I am doing the correct thing and using Driver Sweeper to clear away the old driver before I install the new one. I'm an IT professional, I know what I'm doing.)

 

I updated to the 11.4 drivers, and everything is fine. I played 2 different Blu-ray movies, about 10 minutes of each, and had no driver crashes.

 

I'd recommend going back to old drivers if u can. See if the problem still occurs, if not then something's causing an issue with the newer drivers on your system. Dunno who it was but someone on these forums has "The latest drivers aren't always the best drivers" in their signature I think.

 

Thanks for the feedback here it's greatly appreciated...

I bought this computer around September last year. Right out of the box the computer would not go into sleep ever. Ever. I ended up reinstalling Windows from the DVD and the drivers on here are the drivers that are currentlyty on Dells, "Drivers and downloads." Since that time I have only updated the BIOS to 10 - I am not sure that has anything to do with this or not.

I would have a hard time testing as this doesn't happen "every" time I view video. I ran quite a bit of video today and everything was fine. But we are talking computers, it will show again. I am trying to get into the habit of putting my mouse on the pause icon for video - so if (or I should say when) it happens again and the screen goes black, I can just click the mouse and it should pause/stop the video so it doesn't go into that jamming/clicking which leads to the blue screen.

My driver number for ATI is 8.763...

Once again, thanks for sharing your thoughts/experiences here!

Sandy

 

What program are you all using to view videos?

 

This last time it happened I was viewing the demo for info on RIM's website for the new Blackberry 9900... And the time before I was also viewing video content on a website. My Adobe flash player is up to date... my browser is IE9 but the time prior I was running IE8.

Thanks for your interest and btw nice avatar!

Sandy

 

8.763 seems to be Catalyst 10.8(August 2010), so maybe you could try 11.4 which nzgeek seemed to have luck with.

Otherwise, you could try disable hardware acceleration for video in Flash(?).

 

I was thinking that upgrading the driver might be a good idea as well... Before I posted this thread I thought I had the most current ATI driver - I only go off Dell's Drivers and Downloads - I guess I should be checking the ATI website...

I will also look into your suggestion about disabling the hardware acceleration for flash.

Thanks for the input!

 

I installed the 11.4's a couple of days ago... so far so good, but I won't know for sure if they corrected this problem for at least a month.

Keeping my fingers crossed!

Sandy

 

I had to take them off... the fan just kept coming on and running so hard I am disrupting the entire house why they watch tv, wondering why my computer sounds like it wants to fly out the window. And all I am doing is working on Word documents.

Thus, it's back to the older drivers...

Bummer.

 

You can use the new version of HWinfo32 to control the fans on the R2 now.

 

BatBoy a Moderator of the forum.

 

Thanks for the fan info... I really had no intention of updating the drivers, I did so hoping to solve the problem I originally posted about. But after updating the drivers, I created another problem.

I took them off and things are fine now, but I still expect the BSOD to occur again, as I see no reason why it won't since I have yet to figure out why that is happening. Thankfully it's not a daily occurrence. When it happens again, I will contact Dell.

Once again... thanks for your input!

 

if you want you can upload the minidumps and I can view them for you tell you what is causing it.

They are located at C:\windows\minidump

 

Wow! that is totally nice of you!!

I use Acronis as opposed to the whole drive sweeper, CC Cleaner thing for drivers. I just restore back an image I made prior to upgrading the drivers - takes about 15 minutes, and it's like it never even happened. Thus, I restored my system back to a date before the last BSOD - so no Windows minidump file.

But I know the dreaded BSOD will happen again. And I would totally love take you up on your offer! I will keep this link, and when it happens I will post.

Thanks so much for your incredibly nice offer!

Sandy

 

Anytime just let me know when/if it happens again, I'll be more than happy to help you out.

 

I upgraded to the 11.5 driver and since then I have not had a BSOD, but in the last month I have had 3 instances where I try to view a web page (it happened on maccosmetics.com, also when I tried to view a link someone sent me to see a slideshow for kodakgallery.com, and again from a link to go to a site to find yourself at the U2 concert, where you can tag yourself.) This time I am not rolling video, I am just viewing a web page with images and everything starts to crumble... eventually you end up with a black screen and can't do anything (because you can't see anything) so you have to do a hard shut down. When I looked at the action center it said something like, "Your video hardware has caused Windows to stop working correctly."

So I have 2 questions. 1) Just how bad is it to do a forced shut down when you have Outlook running, encrypted vaults open, IE9 open, etc. and you just hold the Alienware head down until all power is killed. I hate to do that and always wonder if it harms the system in some way.

2) What would you do about this? I was getting BSOD's off the drivers that are supported on Dell's Drivers and Downloads (I had no intention of upgrading), so clearly going back is worse. The only thing I can think of is reinstalling Windows from the DVD and starting "fresh"....

 

A forced shutdown isn't that bad these days, especially with the latest Windows and programs. On older versions, you would lose everything. Now you can pretty much go right back to what you were doing as soon as it boots up. It's not as nice to the hardware as properly shutting down, and you can still lose some stuff if you haven't saved your work, but other than that it's pretty minor.

I would do some research and use the last known rock solid stable release for the 5870CF config. If you're using a stable release but having problems unique to your system, you really should post up those minidumps or do more analysis as to what's causing the video issues.

Starting over and reinstalling Windows might help if the issue is some software issue or driver conflict and you have a mess of stuff on there like tons of media programs and codec packs, but you can probably fix this without a reinstall if you've got a pretty good idea of what software you have and just spend some narrowing down the cause and investigating the possible fixes until you find what works.

 

BSOD related to GPU-Driver TDRs (Timeout Detection and Recovery, essentially everytime your screen goes black and states 'Display driver xxxxxxxx stopped responding and was recovered.' afterwards or BSOD with related statement) are not always related to bad Videodrivers. If you monitor your GPU Temps and they are fine under load, it is most likely caused by something (sometimes completly) different.

nVidia has a nice post about this NVIDIA Statement on TDR Errors - NVIDIA Forums (couldnt find one from AMD, but its essentially the same)

The interresting parts:

Some of these are very unlikely for you, because you have a Laptop from Dell, like "Insufficient/problematic PSU".
Others are unlikely if you didnt OC anything or messed something in the BIOS, like "Unstable overclocks (GPU or CPU) | Incorrect MB voltages (generally NB/SB)"

IF this problem still persists, i could guide you through some troubleshooting, but it is a bit timeconsuming.

 

Thank you Alienwhere (pretty funny spinoff of Alienware btw) and NormenKD for your helpful info. I gave you both a +1.

I am thinking it may have something to do with IE9. It's involved every time this happens, and this didn't start to happen until after I upgraded.

Thanks for taking the time to pass along the info! I will keep trying to narrow it down.

Sandy

 

After testing this for quite some time it appears the cause is enabling Tracking Protection in IE9. With it enabled I crash now and again when trying to launch video on a website, or when video is supposed to automatically start playing on a website.

Since I have disabled it I have had no further trouble. I have been rock solid.

Just wanted to pass that along...

Sandy