Blue Screens in Vista

Hello

I've been experiencing some BSOD's in Vista Home Premium. I've already checked my hardware but the Dell Diagnostics tool (I'm using an XPS M1530) and other third party tools did not recognize any problems.

I tried the debugging software and it showed the following (my apologies for the long text).

Minidump 1:

Minidump 2:

Minidump 3:

Mindump 4:

I have no idea what this means, but it doesn't look too good imo ...

Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

With kind regards,
Gilles

 

Use MemTest86+ to check your RAM. Its MUCH better than the Dell tools, and my guess is your RAM is bad.

You'll want to run MemTest86+ for at least a few hours, preferably 4-8.

 

I ran memtest, but it didn't find any problems.

What do you mean with "4-8"? I didn't understand much of the programme ...

 

I'm surprised some of these (such as outlook.exe) would cause a BSOD.

But otherwise, I was having very similar problems... BSODs a couple times a week.

I tested my RAM using both the Dell thing and MemTest86+, but found nothing... although I didn't run it for as long as Greg suggests.

I did end up mostly fixing this problem, as I now have crashes far less frequently. I'm not sure exactly which thing it was, but the things I did were:
- update to the newest released video drivers (I have Intel graphics)
- update Vista to SP1
- In Adobe flash, turn off hardware acceleration

I've had much better stability since applying these changes. YMMV.

 

For some reason, my laptop was unable to run SP1. It was extremely laggy.

It's annoying to have a brand new laptop with so many BSODs. It's really a shame as everything else is perfect (LG screen, good keyboard, ...)

 

Did you try reinstalling Windows from scratch?

I would work on figuring out your SP1 problem before trying to do anything else... maybe reinstall Windows and then upgrade to SP1. I have considerably better stability with it, and it feels snappier too. (I think that installing SP1 via the standalone is easier if you're reinstalling Windows anyway.)

 

Nope, I'm doing my apprenticeship atm. I might try it tomorrow.
Should I download SP1 through Windows Update or manually?

 

I recommend this order:
- install Vista
- install SP1 via standalone installer I linked to in my last post. Make sure it says it's signed by Microsoft when you run it... otherwise it didn't download right.
- install drivers and additional updates

 

What do you mean with "signed by Microsoft"?

 

Meaning that when you run it, you don't get a warning like this...
http://img454.imageshack.us/img454/6938/vistawarningju5.jpg

...but you instead get a box saying that it is signed (or verified or something) and the publisher is Microsoft.

 

OK, thanks for the info, I'll try it asap.

Should memtest find an error, will Dell have to replace it? (since it's a third party tool ...)

 

Just got another one, this time DRIVER_IRQL_..... referring to dxgkrnl.sys. I guess that's my video driver?

I'm reinstalling vista tomorrow as I have 2 days off.

 

only time that i experienced bsod in vista was because of the graphic driver. clean install is a good approach in this case, and leave the graphic driver to the very end - meaning after installing available vista updates as well - and only after creating a restore point

cheers ...

 

OK, since I didn't receive anymore BSODs, I decided to wait. Today, however, I received another one, this time referring to profos.sys and ntfs.sys. When I looked up "profos.sys" in google, all the links referred to Bitdefender (most of them Bitdefender 10 though).

I was also scanning my laptop with Ad-Aware. I've read that Bitdefender and other spyware programs could cause problems.

Might this be a problem with Bitdefender? Most of the BSODs refer to an anti-virus programm. Quite annoying since I bouht BD 2008 ($100) specially for my laptop.

 

just for curiosity, how many apps pertaining to virus, spyware, firewall that u currently have, apart from vista firewall and vista defender?

cheers ...

 

another user had a similar problem when using utorrent on 4gb

 

Only Bitdefender 2008, CCleaner and Lavasoft Ad-aware (latest version)
I hope it's due to the combination of the programms and not just Bitdefender. Would be a waste of 100$ ...

 

does this AdAware being set up as having a running process in the background?
if yes, try disable it (use AdAware in manual mode), and see

BitDefender - tried to see if they have a patch/update on their site?

cheers ...

 

Nope, Adaware isn't running in the background as far as I can see.
I haven't downloaded a new version of Bitdefender yet, will look for updates this evening.

Got another one today btw (it only happens in the morning, morning mood maybe? ). It referred once again to a driver . All of the BSOD I have recently received refer to a driver, so I guess it's a software issue ...

Anyway, do you advise running memtest before or after the format? Just want to make sure ...

*edit* another question: I don't use certain things on my laptop, for instance the fingerprint reader, and I don't bother to download drivers for them. Could this cause problems on my laptop?

 

This is not a Windows Vista issue - a poorly written device driver is causing the system to crash. Without a kernel debugger it will be difficult to check exactly which driver it is since it appears to only occur when an interrupt is handled and you don't have access to the stack.

I would update to the latest version of all known drivers - my guess is that it's not something major (like the video drivers) but some minor low-cost peripheral (for instance, a memory card reader) whose manufacturer can't afford to hire competent driver developers.

 

OK, I'm glad that it's just software and not hardware.

It might be my fault too, I think I screwed up when formatting Vista. Looking at this post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=3314842&postcount=1291 I totally screwed up. I did not install the AHCI controller and did not know that some drivers that were unchecked had to be installed too. I didn't install MD first either ...

Anyway, I'll try it this weekend and hopefully it will work then. How come it gives so many BSODs? Is Vista more sensitive to bad/old drivers?

 

Drivers causing the system to crash isn't a Windows-specific thing, it's simply because of the way operating systems are designed. Most device drivers are kernel-mode, meaning that they share the same address space and operate in a higher privilege level than the rest of the system. If something goes wrong, it can cause the entire system to crash, where user-mode applications can't do that.

It's not that Vista is "more sensitive" to bad/old drivers, it's more likely that someone didn't follow the driver development spec to the letter. Microsoft is proactively trying to solve this in Vista by introducing a user-mode driver framework. The whole idea is to encourage hardware vendors to migrate their (potentially sketchy) drivers away from the kernel.

 

Hi guys,

I did a clean format today and installed all the new drivers from the Dell site. I also installed Firefox (latest version). Unfortunately, I got once again a BSOD. Windows says that this was caused by hardware: RAM, Mobo, CPU or the power unit.

This is what Windbg gives me:

I did a memtest yesterday but it didn't give any errors. What should I do know?

 

No one? Should I call Dell and ask for a replacement of my RAM, even if I'm not sure it is the cause of these problems?

 

Hi guys

I'm just wondering, is it possible that my USB stick causes the BSODs? It's an older Emtec and is not compatible with Vista according to their site.

I haven't used it for several days and no BSODs ...

 

I don't think so, but just boot w/o it and see.

 

I'm still waiting until it gives a BSOD without the USB Stick.

Anyway, if it's a hardware problem, what would most likely cause it? RAM? Mobo?

 

OK, it is not the USB stick, I got another one today. This time it was "Memory_Management":

Btw, I did sfc/scannow and it told me that some files were damage and could not be repaired. From the log:

Any help? I'll probably call Dell to replace the RAM.

*edit* Could someone tell me how to get Memtest to run for several hours? It always stops after 1h.

 

Hey guys, I think I found the problem. I did another test with Memtest and it gave me the following report:

http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9083/img0319ya8.jpg

Could someone confirm me that this is due to faulty RAM?

 

Could anyone PLEASE confirm this? I'm mailing Dell tonight, don't wanna look silly if this is not an error message