XP Pro and BSOD daily

[LogAn'sRun]

Hi,

I've been getting this daily BSOD (sometimes several times a day) that I don't know how to solve.

It's some Error message that refers back to newly installed hardware not operating right and then performs a memory dump and reboots the session after 100secs or something like that.

the next message is 'Windows has recovered from a serious error, please report', I report, get the MSN help page because I report and the help page is the same everytime, 'MS has no solution to your problem at this time'.

Funny thing is, this BSOD just turned up maybe 3 weeks ago, and I haven't installed any hardware at all in perhaps the last 6-8 months. I run 1 external HD, all other HD's are inside. I've unplugged the external HD and still get the BSOD.

System specs are:

XP Pro SP2 (or 3 can't remember now)
1 x Raptor X
1 x 7200.11 500gb
1 x 7200.10 250gb
2 DVD drives
1 x evga 7950GT
1 X-Fi Xtremee Gamer.

As I said, the last thing I put in the computer was an old drive I swapped from another computer (250GB) and that was like 6-8mos ago.

This error message has just started within the last 3 weeks.

I've performed several online scans and have Panda Platinum installed on my computer. All virus scans report nothing.

OS is legal and legit, no copy.


Does anyone have any idea what this is, or how to fix it? If needed I can take a picture of the BSOD itself if needed.

[s1nykuL]

Please post the error codes. The exact message and the names of any drivers or dll's refered to.

[tiro_uspsss]

+1 for error codes

check ur RAM

speaking of RAM: what RAM is it, is it OC'd? is the CPU OC'd?

[LudLud]

Yep happened to me, right out of the blue, the blue screen of death appeared (LOL !!!)
Turned out, my 2 sticks of ram went bad, good thing i had 4 running ;)
So now im back to 2 gigs instead of 4 :/
It's most likely your RAM like people above me said.

[LogAn'sRun]

Well the great irony is I sat by the computer all last night with my camera and not once did I get BSOD. Pisses me off really because as I've mentioned, it occurs everyday (over the weekend it was like 2-3 times a day). Soon as it happens again, I'll post a pic.

Nothing is OC'd , ram is cheap ram (like 3200 or something). Thinking about upgrading this system, but that will come later.

[s1nykuL]

Well the great irony is I sat by the computer all last night with my camera and not once did I get BSOD. Pisses me off really because as I've mentioned, it occurs everyday (over the weekend it was like 2-3 times a day). Soon as it happens again, I'll post a pic.

Nothing is OC'd , ram is cheap ram (like 3200 or something). Thinking about upgrading this system, but that will come later.

Expect it to BSOD when your camera batteries are flat :rolleyes:

[MikeB12]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/DevTools/Debugging/default.mspx

[LogAn'sRun]

oh man, I appreciate the help mikeb12, but that was like ancient latin to me. I just spent the last hour dl the debugging tools, support tools and what not, and I could not get that dumpchk.exe to work at all. I have the cmd prompt open, and type the command given line by line and nothing comes up.
I'm back to the camera. . .

[MikeB12]

yeah, it looks like greek doesn't it... I messed with it about 3 months ago for about 15 minutes, and gave up... I went back to the old tried and true search for bad hardware by swapping parts and fixed it. then did a fresh install just to be sure. and fixed it...

but, yeah I played with those tools during that little troubleshoot session and gave up after little effort.. it looked like a lot of effort figuring it out just to get a bsod code that may or may not tell me squat..

[LogAn'sRun]

dude! You tell me that now! LOL. You made me suffer and try and learn ms tech language that not even their support can speak. I even tried more today :(

Oh well, does this image help anyone?

It said 'stop error message from device driver' on MS's error page. . .

[LogAn'sRun]

**bump**

[MikeB12]

theres also a utility called "driver verifier" by MS... you can try it..
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/DevTools/tools/DrvVerifier.mspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244617

be warned though, it's more techno speak...


honestly, as I said above. I usually forgo these ms tools.
I've wasted more time with them....

It's much easier to do it the old fashion way.
Once you've run out of options with the current os install..
Wipe it, fresh install. if it's fixed, you'll know it was a software/driver issue.
If not, drop to a minimal hardware set and start the process of elimination until the culprit hardware is found.

I've wasted so much time troubleshootiing, only to exhaust my options and patience, wipe it clean and start from scratch. it's very frustrating on some problems.
but you don't know until you try. but this is a week old now since OP'ed, it's time to go clean..

[LogAn'sRun]

yeah, I hear ya. I'm just not that keen on doing a fresh install, it seems to take me weeks to get everything back to the way it was originally. I mean, I never feel my back-ups transfer over right, and what you should really back up and so on.

But I get the point. :(

[MikeB12]

Yeah, I know what you mean...
now that big sata drives are pretty affordable... I keep one in an external esata enclosure; backup all my software installs (with keys in txt files) and personal data to it...
I end up doing fresh installs about every 6 months on my personal pc anyway, just to keep it clean.. and the esata backup device with all the installs and data comes in real handy. just frsh install, plug it in, and everything is there... my personal pc has 2 drives anyway, so the D: partition is just a copy of what I keep on my esata external.. but it comes in handy when doing the other pc's in my house..

anyway, right now you have quite a bit of hardware in the pc. 3hd's, 2 dvd's, sound card, etc....
it could be any one of those malfunctioning either hard or driver related causing it.
before you frsh install, you could always start eliminating hardware to stall doing a frsh install...
and see if the bsod stops...
I'd probably start with the xfi... unistall all drivers. and remove it.
then unistall your video drivers and get a fresh install on a new dl.
after that go down to 1 dvd... then eliminate all the hd's except your os partition drive.

anyway, you know how to do it... just an idea to try if you wanna take a different route from wiping the os partition.

[billb]

As for capturing BSOD screens..

Right click My Computer
Choose Properties
Click Advanced on the next memu
Click Settings under Startup and Recovery on the next menu
Uncheck the Automatically restart box under System Failure in the next menu.
OK, OK.

Now your system won't restart automatically when it BSODs, and you can read/copy/photo the blue screen.
Now you don't have to sit there holding your camera, waiting for the camera's batteries to die!!!!
Just hit the power button to restart.

[LogAn'sRun]

well I went and did a fresh install last night, have a lot more programs to install later tonight after work. Not that happy about it, but I'm hoping that it will solve my BSOD's. Went and got SP3 at the same time, we'll see if that makes life easier.

[LogAn'sRun]

*update*

Believe it or not, I did 2 installs over the weekend as I wasn't happy with the original. I had made the mistake of having all my HDs plugged in during install so my primary was assigned (F) or something like that which was causing boot issues. Anyway, the long and short of it is this: I'm still getting the BSOD I was getting previously and now I'm really beginning to suspect it has something to do with either my Creative drivers (XP Pro as said, Xfi xtremegamer) or ?? I'm going to have to do what Bill suggested and see the error screen so I can get a snap of it. . .

[Newblar]

take the screenshot of the BSOD, the actual error is much more useful than speculation

[dannyboy321]

sounds like hardware problems to me but could be software, tell me when you done the fresh reinstall before any other software installation did you get this bsod and also does the bsod happen when on idle at all like you come back from a cup of tea to find your pc has restarted or shutdown or does it happen on load when pc is being worked
CHEERS

DAN

[Jazz_Data]

okay, once you know how, the debugging thing is really easy

just download windbg like you did before, start it...

go in file -> open crash dump

browse to c:\windows\minidump

open latest crash dump

it will load up, complain about errors...

then at the small prompt, type:

!analyze -v

and post the results here