Whats making my computer crash?

I have a sager NP9390. It had a Haswell i7 CPU, nvidia 780m GPU, 8GB 1600 MHz RAM. The only thing that I can think of that could use a slight upgrade is the RAM, Im thinking of putting another 8GB in once I get the extra cash. But recently my computer has been crashing.

I noticed it would crash when I am running bitorrent in the background while I am watching breaking bad. The first time it happened was just the other day and bitorrent was running in the background and I was watching breaking bad. All of the sudden the video froze and I got a BSOD. The Blue screen went away so fast I couldnt read any error message. But then it happened again later. Now it just happened again under the same circumstances. I scanned my computer with malwarebytes, microsoft security essentials, and a rootkit scanner by malwarebytes.

Im not sure what the problem could be. The only thing I was able to see the BSOD say was "DRIVER IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL" So that tells me its a driver issue. Also when I am in the middle of playing a game the game will crash sometimes and then I will get a little message saying my driver stopped working but it recovered itself. This leads me to think that the video driver probably needs updating but I checked and their are no new updates.

Kinda stuck here.

 

You could download whocrashed to analyze the crash dump file.

 

"No valid crash dumps have been found on your computer"

 

Anything in the event viewer logs that ould indicate what stopped working, look for critical errors in the system logs?

I'm betting on your video drivers by the way, either the nVidia or Intel ones.

 

Im not really sure what I am supposed to be looking for in the even viewer but here are a few screencaps that might be useful?








and the list goes on. Please let me know if this was helpful in finding the problem in any way.

 

You want to look under Windows log, system and application IIRC. Look for errors or warnings with a time stamp from when the crash occurred.

 

These might help?

 

The last one is likely related to your crash ,but it doesn't tell us what caused the crash.

Is bitorrent using any kind of hardware accelerator, if it is try disabling it. You can always try reinstalling the nVidia drivers as well as the Intel video drivers, a bit of a machine gun reproach, but if my hunch is correct, it might just fix the issue.

 

I have that last one on my machine but I don't get BSOD's from it.

Is there Optimus on the machine, if there is you could try disabling it to see if the problem stops.

 

The last error appears for any shutdown that wasn't done cleanly, so loss of power, certain crashes, holding down the power button will all show that last error. As far as I know, all Sagers have Optimus and no way of disabling it in the BIOS unlike on the Precision. Precisions and Alienware are among the rare notebooks where you can actually disable switchable graphics to run on the dGPU all the time. There might be a way to force the GPU on particular applications via software setting though.

 

Yeah I researched it like crazy but it doesn't hurt anything, and it's there on boot up everytime. Every Precision I've had - same thing. Something with driver.
Bummer about not being able to disable Optimus.

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Edit: OP, what Anti-Virus if any do you have running?

 

I dont have "active" protection but I run malwarebytes, microsoft security essentials, and malwarebytes rootkit removal at least a few times a week. If by hardware accelerator you mean OC I am using EVGA Precision X. I just uninstalled it and reinstalled a new version the other day but I dont remember if the BSOD happened before I did that or after. So that might have something to do with it possibly?

 

OC and hardware acceleration aren't the same thing. That said, if your GPU is OC'ed all the time, drop the OC and see if the problem still occurs.

 

The BIOS only allows me to OC it 135MHz. I keep it at that all the time. 135MHz isnt going to really be an issue will it?

 

Actually, it could be, you might be running into an edge case. In other words, in your exact situation, something doesn't like the OC and causes the crash even though it works fine for everything else. I don't think I ever ran into that kind of scenario for video players, but I did run into it with some games in the past.

You could also try another video player, there are enough alternatives out there: WMP, VLC, MPC-HC, Zune, etc. Unless you're watching your videos through streaming?

If it's streaming, what browser are you using?

 

I just watch my stuff through windows media player. I never had a problem with it. I have been watching stuff on windows media player the whole time this thread has been going on and no issue. But I bet you if I turn bitorrent on in the background within 30 mins it will crash.

 

You could always humor me and try MPC-HC: Home – MPC-HC just to see if you still get the crash. If you don't like it, you can always uninstall it.

 

So you're saying, download that. Run bitorrent in the background and watch something with that to see if it still crashes right?

 

Yup. What file format are your videos in by the way? .mp4, .wmv, .mkv?

 

What I have been watching is actually .avi. But anyways I will give what you suggested above a try now.

 

Bug Check 0xD1: DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (Windows Debuggers)

Resolving stop (blue screen) errors in Windows 7

 

Well I just finished watching a movie using MPC-HC instead a windows media player and bitorrent was running in the background and no crash occurred. I find it hard to believe that this made the difference. Maybe just a coincidence that it didn't crash.

 

That's kind of good news! Of course you'll think one is coming so just wait it out. If it doesn't come then be relieved.
It really could be just that.

 

At least, we have a workaround, still haven't found the cause of the problem, but it's been narrowed down to WMP not playing nice with something else. That doesn't mean that WMP is at fault, it could be a problem with the video or audio driver.

 

The driver \Driver\WUDFRd failed to load for the device USB\VID_0A5C&PID_5801&MI_01\7&1eb0f4e8&0&0001
Task Category (212)
Event ID (219)

Typical:

Event ID 219: Windows Kernel PNP - TechNet Articles - United States (English) - TechNet Wiki

Event ID 219 is logged after you install Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2

Well at least it's not an empty page.

 

Now I am having some more problems today, I am in the middle of playing WoW and my video drivers crash. Right after I log back in I get disconnected. I log back in again and everything is fine... at least for now. What the hell can I do about these video drivers?

 

Uninstall them, redownload them and when you isntall, choose custom install and tick the clean install box. also, if you haven't done so yet, drop the overclock and test, you'll know if it's your overclock or the drivers if you start by disabling the OC.