w7 crashes at least 1-2x a week

I did a w7upgrade and for the most part it's stable but vista was far mores stable. w7 locks up where the screen is black and i can only move the mouse. i get wierd windows errors like this one:

"error hresult e_fail has been returned from a call to a com component"

my laptop seems to get hotter too. not sure why. I have an HP dv5 1000.

i have 32bit. as a last resort i'm thinking of doing a fresh install. can i then install 64bit since i'm not doing an upgrade?

 

This might help!
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811889

 

you would probably be best off with a clean install, and i would recommend moving to x64

 

i was looking into a clean install. x64 depends on the processor i'm using right? i have a feeling i have to stick with 32bit.

 

it's a core 2 duo right? should run 64bit without problems.

 

I think you will want to do a clean install. And I think you will want to install 64-bit Windows 7. But before you decide whether or not to use 64-bit Windows 7, you will want to surf through HP's tech support and make sure they provide 64-bit drivers for your notebook. I quickly looked at the drivers they offer for notebooks in the same series as your notebook and it appear that HP has a complete set of 64-bit Windows 7 drivers available for download. But I have owned a couple of abandoned HP devices that could not keep up with OS upgrades because HP offered no driver updates.

Jeremy

 

I'd recommend a clean install, but don't install x64.. Just stay with x86, it's fine.

 

Yep clean install and x86.

 

and run a bootable (not from windows) memory burn in tool for a day or three.

msft says that crashes in XP, Vista, *and* Win7 crashes are mostly (>70%) caused by:

bad ram
bad device drivers (usually video)

The bad device driver problem has unfortunately persisted across XP, Vista, and Win7, mostly from products from one company. Bad ram is a huge variable with many sub-causes.

Intel has said more than once (at IDC) that as they continue process shrinks from 65 down to 22nm, they are starting to worry about (yes) cosmic rays and natural background radiation flipping bits randomly. Intel is looking at making 2 bit parity ecc memory mandatory for their 4th generation 64 bit and quad cores starting at the 35nm die shrink in 2013.

 

There's no need to run anything for three days, IMO.

MS provides their own bootable memory diagnostic program, and you can get that here.

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

If it comes back OK your memory shouldn't be the issue. In that case I agree with newsposter, it may be driver related. If you're running the lastest video drivers, go back to an old version and see what happens.

 

well my system wasn't crashing on vista. so i'm guessing it should not be the ram. and i just recently updated the ati drivers... so i'll see if that helps over the next week.

will i still need to go to HP and get the latest drivers for the laptop or will the w7 install take care of all of that?

as for the heating issue. i briefly looked into rmclock but that seemed kinda confusing and cumbersome to tweak. is there nothing more simple? I'm not interested in undervolting.. but rather for the cpu to not be running at 2Ghz 24-7. My gf's crappy compaq had rmclock and it would throttle and i don't think i did any tweaking.

update: i think the reason i'm having issues is that rmclock doesn't support my processor. in the utility it doesn't recognize the cpu

 

I don't understand why you spend time on this instead of just wiping the darn thing and installing a clean and nice OS, then take it from there and see if it still happens.. I mean how hard can it be to backup your stuff and do that?

As for temperature, try and go into the options for whatever power scheme you are using and set the minimum processor state to 0% or something, then your CPU should downclock whenever its not needed.

 

the min processor state i had was 5%... i changed it to 0%. i'm not sure that will make a big difference.

on vista there was a setting that allowed you to tweak battery life and performance. there was like 6 bubbles to indicate the level. i don't see an equivalent on w7.

as for why i don't just reinstall. i'm hesitant. i have a system that is 80% stable. i'm worried about further stability problems if i do a reinstall.

also, i have an HP partition that has vista on it. since i have w7 i have zero reason to keep it, is that right? can i merge partitions?

 

Perform a clean install and change architecture to 64 bit.

 

only you want to make sure that you don't build your house on a shaky foundation that might collapse on you anytime...

 

You are assuming that the automated install process is at fault and not something that occured post-install.

I'd bet on user error, uninformed mucking around, or an intermittent hardware fault as cause for instability before I'd suspect a faulty O/S install process.

 

Jesus christ, just backup your stuff on another pc or a usb harddrive, wipe the entire god damned thing and install windows 7 again (and by wiping i mean deleting all partitions there may be, including the hp backup BS).. nice, neat and clean OS and if you problems are not solved, its hardware OR perhaps some driver issue, although i doubt it. How hard can it be? I assure you, its nice to have a clean OS and not that upgrade ****.

PS - The "laptop getting hotter" thing is probably because powermizer doesnt work that good in WIndows 7.. Powermizer keeps the GPU clocks down to cool the pc, and in vista they never went up unless you were gaming or something, but now the clocks go up whenever you move around a window.. atleast thats how it is at me, but thats just nvidia.. we all know they cant make drivers.