Fairly frequent BSOD's on vista 64-bit, help!

Hi all,

I tried googling but there are just so results to sift through, I think an interactive help would be best for me.

As the title indicates, I've been getting BSOD's in the past week on my new laptop (see signature for specs). I'm running Windows Vista 64-bit Business edition.

It tended to happen whilst I was browsing on firefox and playing gunbound, but it's hard to say if those are the causes.

What steps should I be taking to fix this problem? I can't exactly take a picture of my screen since the BSOD doesn't last long enough for me to get a camera out, can I retrieve the error information somehow?

 

Write down the STOP error message

STOP: ?????????????????????????????????

Also, note whether the stop error specifies a particular file such as ?????.sys

That will take you a long way.

Also, you can look in your event viewer under

START > CONTROL PANEL > ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS, Event Viewer.

Look for anything with a RED X under SYSTEM

If push comes to shove, you can post your mindump, but worry about that later.


You say you have Vista, but your signature says Windows 7

Also, when you installed, where did you get the drivers for your laptop. If you are using an OEM supplied driver disk, odds are they are very old. I have to m860tu laptops and the oem supplied driver disks had drivers form December 2008--I had a blue screen right away and the first this I did was update the video, sound and wired netwok card drivers and haven't had a blue screen since

 

Make sure your BIOS is up-to-date.
Make sure your OS is up-to-date.
Make sure your drivers are up-to-date.

Go into BIOS setup and disable any hardware you don't have on this system.
Go into Device Manager in Windows, and disable any hardware you've never used in the past year (modem, firewire, smart card reader, etc.). (If you ever need a device then it only takes 15 seconds to re-enable it.)

Run a virus and spyware scan -- sometimes viruses can cause BSODs.

You can also debug the BSODs by following the instructions here: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35246

(You need to right-click the program and "Run as administrator". And remember the step about importing the symbols. Also remember the step to use "!analyze -v" as explained on that page.) Post the debugger output here and we'll comment on it.

 

well since u got no stop error message i cant help that much...but have u installed something recently like new drivers, software, hardware, or changed the registry values by any chance........does it ONLY happen when your doing something really specific....

 

Have you tried to restore the system back to before this past week?

BSOD when playing games is likely to be traced back to an incompatible graphic driver. Try updating it or going back to the version before?

System->Advanced->Startup: turn off the automatic restart option, this will stop at BSOD screen and allowing you to jot down the error codes and messages.

cheers ...

 

My signature is partially correct. I am dual booting W7 and Vista. Primarily using vista.

I have not use system restore, I've tended to have bad experiences with it but I'll try it if this becomes more frequent.

I downloaded the most recent Nvidia graphics driver, everyone seemed to be recommending it on the sager forums..

I also disabled automatic restart, so next time, hopefully I'll be able to record these problems next time it BSOD's (no problems since the last time I posted...)

 

BSODs are logged in the Event Viewer (refer to post #2).

 

I think I located it in the event viewer, but it doesn't provide me any useful information, nor does Microsoft help work either. See attachment.

I'll try recording the error by hand next time it happens.

 

The actual cause of the BSOD is going to have been logged shortly before the log entry you've got. Event ID 6008 is basically just logging the fact that the system shutdown unexpectedly - regardless of the actual cause of the shutdown - and therefore the event logging system did not shut down gracefully. Check the log entries that were made just before that one to see if there's anything else that's marked as a warning or worse.