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    Never in my life have I had so many BSOD's

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by TheCleanerLeon, Mar 30, 2008.

  1. TheCleanerLeon

    TheCleanerLeon Notebook Geek

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    I have been on vista all of 2 n half weeks, and Ive had BSOD's from driver installs, media direct (which would not let me boot vista!! it would boot straight into MD, BSOD, so i would try selecting OS and the only option being 'XP Embedded' I'll never be installing that crap ever again) and then a few completely random ones which lead to me loosing work and wanting to shot the damn thing out of the window.

    Ive come from a self built system thats lasted about 5 years without ever giving one, and before that even the 98SE/ME system wasnt as bad as this.

    Would you guys recommend I install vista again leaving out ALL dell stuff and putting SP1 on before any drivers? or should it be vista clean install, drivers, then SP1.

    This laptop is now mission critical being my only computer. I cant have it BSOD'ing randomly.

    I was open minded about Vista, but it seems to be a pile of rubbish. Ive never experienced installs of programs last hours!! and this is apparently a quick system
     
  2. nizzy1115

    nizzy1115 Notebook Prophet

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    Are you using the modded nvidia drivers?
     
  3. kegobeer

    kegobeer 1 hr late but moving fast

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    What laptop are you using? Did it come with Vista preinstalled, or did you install it yourself? If you installed it yoruself, did you upgrade or do a fresh install? Did you download and install all of the required Vista drivers?

    I've got an e1705 that shipped with XP Pro, and I did a fresh install with Vista Ultimate, and haven't had any problems.
     
  4. Crimsonman

    Crimsonman Ex NBR member :cry:

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    I've never had one BSOD in vista....
     
  5. SteveJonesy

    SteveJonesy Notebook Evangelist

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    Me neither. Wiped and reinstalled on arrival.
     
  6. chelet

    chelet Notebook Deity

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    Sounds like a hardware problem to me.
    Do you still have the Dell Diagnostics partition?
     
  7. LoneWolf15

    LoneWolf15 The Chairman

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    While I'm not Vista's biggest fan, it's far from an unstable operating system. For that reason, the OS is not the first thing I'd blame. Usually something like this is the sign of a hardware problem, or a driver issue.

    If the BSODs started right out of the box, I'd be far more likely to blame faulty memory, or a possible overheat issue. I'd start by creating a Memtest86+ bootable CD and taking it through about 5 passes to make sure your RAM is all okay, and just to be absolutely sure, I'd remove and reseat your RAM before running the test. I've found that Memtest86+ can catch memory errors that the Dell Diagnostics partition misses.

    If the memory test passes, I'd run some temperature monitoring software to make sure your CPU and/or graphics chip isn't overheating during use. I'd also make sure you have the latest drivers installed for your system --and do NOT if at all possible use drivers from Microsoft's Windows Update service; I've found on a number of occasions that the drivers they supply (especially graphics drivers, but on one or two occasions, storage controller or network drivers) are not a good match for a system and can cause real issues. Go to http://www.support.dell.com to get your drivers.

    If all of these tests pass muster, with nothing obvious to point to, do a clean install of your OS, and don't install any additional dell software; just the drivers. Rather than using the drivers off the resource CD, put all of the latest drivers from Dell's support website on a USB key and use them instead, in case one of the drivers on the CD is older and causing your issues.
     
  8. swarmer

    swarmer beep beep

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    Dell has a Power-On Self-Test (POST) utility in their BIOS. You can get there from either the BIOS setup (F2) or the boot menu (F12), I forget which. I think it's the boot menu, F12. Anyway... run it.

    Also check your video drivers and see if there's a more recent stable version.

    Also, my system's been more stable since I turned off Adobe Flash in IE and blocked most of it using Flashblock in Firefox. Also, you can turn off hardware acceleration in Flash. You can probably just do that instead of blocking it, if you prefer.

    Also, what error messages do you get on the BSODs?
     
  9. dpilot83

    dpilot83 Notebook Consultant

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    It appears you original question was:

    If those are the two options you're interested in I would recommend the first option of installing Vista, then installing the standalone SP1, then installing the drivers. Make certain you get the correct drivers. I had BSOD issues on my 1330 straight out of the box. These appear to have been fixed by the clean install in the order mentioned. Good luck.
     
  10. Samuel613

    Samuel613 Notebook Evangelist

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    I have not had even one BSOD since installing Vista x64 (now at SP1). And I have the internal BT, fingerprint reader, external LCD (dual-view) and multiple peripherals attached via a USB hub.

    The first thing to do is boot off and install Dell MediaDirect.

    I'd recommend installing SP1 first, then downloading the latest drivers from http://support.dell.com after rebooting (After you fresh install Vista, may need the network card driver from the CD or elsewhere to download the rest of the drivers, though it may already be built-in to Vista). You then need to run the MediaDirect disc installer off the CD in Windows.

    Also, for the video drivers, I have seen good results with 174.31 WHQL Dell edition from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com forums.
     
  11. sstackho

    sstackho Notebook Guru

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    I first blamed Vista for my crashes on my new M1530. But it appears that it's actually a bad hard drive and/or motherboard. It's getting sent back.