The dreaded Blue Screen... AGAIN!!!

[Clarence Martin]

:mad:


Don't know what it is with Vista, but 4 to 5 times every day!! I get the dreaded BLUE SCREEN, the computer freezes up for a good 5 minutes, runs through the crash dump, shuts down and restarts. Sometimes it happens with firefox, but it usually is when running Google Chrome.

Ran the Virus check, Malware check, everything is ok.


What is going on with it ??

[Steve Meliza]

Many times BSOD's are caused by buggy device drivers, but that aside, Vista was never known to be a good OS. You should consider upgrading to Win7.

[Jeff Monson]

Just got done dealing with the "blue screen", I ended up having to reformat my hard drive and reinstalling windows. My computer guy said it had a boot kit virus that had messed up my boot log. Anyway it was a major PITA, good luck.

[Greg Portland]

:mad:


Don't know what it is with Vista, but 4 to 5 times every day!! I get the dreaded BLUE SCREEN, the computer freezes up for a good 5 minutes, runs through the crash dump, shuts down and restarts. Sometimes it happens with firefox, but it usually is when running Google Chrome.

Ran the Virus check, Malware check, everything is ok.


What is going on with it ??
Describe the hardware & it's age. That will help us out, thanks...

[Clarence Martin]

dell demensions E521 No additions to the computer. It's factory stock. About 6 years old.

[Tom Stenzel]

You can try cleaning dust out of it and check the cooling fans to make sure they're working OK and the air path is clear.

This is a wood working forum, I would think most of the computers used here are stuffed with sawdust ;-).

Also you can try reseating the memory chips, taking the usual static prevention precautions.

If a part is failing my blind stab would be a memory chip is on the way out. I'm not familiar with the dual core Athlon processors used in these computers, if they're prone to fail and cause the problems you're having.

-Tom Stenzel

[Jim Matthews]

I now consider PCs disposable.

Find the best quality for $500, and under.
Keep a good backup regimen in play.

Windows 7 has been rock steady for me.
Vista was a rushed product that didn't fare well.

6 years is pretty long for a PC...
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/making-sense-of-mean-time-to-failure-mttf/310

FYI - I like the Asus Eee PC series.
They're small, stable and cheap.

[Dennis Peacock]

Same say that I'm crazy or extreme. I backup my data on my machine every month, to an external USB drive. Every 2 years, I make a full system backup, reformat my hard drive, do a fresh O/S install, install my applications, recover my data, and I'm up and running again. I'm running on a Dell machine that I bought in Feb of 2006. I have replaced the hard drives in the machine once. Like it or not, hard drives should not be trusted if they are over 5 years old. Replace them with new ones and keep on trucking.

Vista was never a good O/S for me. I switched to Windows 7 and I've been a MUCH happier person because Windows 7 is a much more stable O/S than Vista ever thought about.

I go with my 35 years of IT experience.....backup, format, reload, and keep on keeping on. Unless it's Unix or Linux of course. :)

Oh...and as stated before.....device drivers can make your machine crash. It's not always the O/S that causes problems. :D

[paul cottingham]

I'll bet it's a cranky driver. Failing that, my next guess would be faulty ram.

[Dan Hintz]

Make sure you install SP1 with Vista... had a nasty habit of killing the MBR and corrupting files whenever it went to sleep until SP1 was released.

If no new software has been installed, BSODs are often caused by failing power supplies and / or failing memory. Been there, done that on several of each. 6 years is a good amount of time for a low-end power supply, and even high-quality memory eventually fails (I try to use Kingston, but I've had them replace a few sticks over the years... under warranty, of course).

[Steve Meliza]

Even though you haven't added any internal components, upgrading an existing driver or installing a driver for a USB device (e.g. multi-function printer) can introduce a bug. A good OS design would prevent buggy drivers from bringing down the whole system, but Microsoft feels differently so it is what it is.

Given the age of your system a hardware failure is certainly possible. My Dell laptop purchased in May 2006 recently gave me the Linux equivalent of a BSOD, but was kind enough to give me an error message saying it couldn't access the hard drive. When I rebooted sometimes the system found the drive and booted up fine, other times it failed to boot. Had I been running WinXP I probably would have got a BSOD with an error message saying that it couldn't access a location in memory. The laptop now boots and runs fine with the hard drive in an external USB enclosure, though it certainly isn't usable as a laptop like that.

My Dell cost me about $300 a year (including RAM and HDD upgrades) so that is my benchmark to see how long I have to keep a laptop to make it economical. I did look at the cheaper $500 laptops mentioned above, but just can't see them lasting me two years needed to get the value I want, much less have the power to be enjoyable to use from the get go. There were some $1000 laptops that held some possibilities for lasting the 3 years, but in the end I spent $2000 on a Macbook Pro that should last me the 6+ years necessary, but I should be able to sell it in 3 years for $1000 if it is starting to feel slow or the 256GB SSD is filling up. My wife doesn't need as much computer as I so almost exactly 2 years ago when her old HP laptop died we spent about $1100 on a Macbook Air that today is worth $510 according to mac2sell. If she wanted to sell it today and go buy a new Macbook Air I'd be perfectly happy to do so.

[Dale Cruea]

If you have the install disk you might try to reinstall your OS.
I have a 10 year old system that still works great for me.
My windows 7 started crashing earlier this month. Nothing I did solved the problem.
I reinstalled windows 7 and all my software and my computer is working just fine.

[Myk Rian]

You can try cleaning dust out of it and check the cooling fans to make sure they're working OK and the air path is clear.

This is a wood working forum, I would think most of the computers used here are stuffed with sawdust ;-).

Also you can try reseating the memory chips, taking the usual static prevention precautions.

If a part is failing my blind stab would be a memory chip is on the way out. I'm not familiar with the dual core Athlon processors used in these computers, if they're prone to fail and cause the problems you're having.

-Tom Stenzel
The memory is the first place I look. After that, re-seat any cards in it.

[Dale Coons]

One other thing to check--do you have more than one piece of virus software running at the same time? A couple of years ago I had a coworker with this same problem (multiple BSOD's daily). I deleted one of the two virus checkers she had running all the time and she hasn't had a crash since. Sometimes more ain't better...

[Damon Stathatos]

No thread like this would be complete without that 'one in every crowd' or 'comments from the peanut gallery' but here goes anyway...

I used to have all of the same problems, blue screen, freezes, constantly upgrading, and on and on. I used to set up a second internal hard drive just for frequent back ups because I knew it was just a matter of time before I'd need it. Working late one night on an advertising project, past deadline, our graphic artist calling me off the hook for her needed material, the L.A. Times calling off the hook, they're 'holding up the presses,' you get the picture, when...bam...it happens. Was 'driving' Photoshop too hard, too many files open at once...and couldn't get the computer past the being crashed. My office then was about five blocks from an Apple store. Got up from my desk and walked down and bought an Imac. That was in 2005 and with (relatively no) problems since then, I'm on the same Imac.

Reading this thread brings back all the memories of constantly trying to finally 'beat' Windows. Is Apple absolutely infallible? Of course not...but, like I say, I'm on the same Imac which I bought that night and now only reminisce about all that I'm reading in this thread. More expensive out of the gate but, in my case anyway, light years ahead as time goes on.

Best to you and here's hoping that you're able to solve your current problem, but if your experience is anything like mine was, there's surely more to come down the road.

[Curt Harms]

The memory is the first place I look. After that, re-seat any cards in it.

If Clarence feels up to it or knows someone who is, he could download memtest x86, copy it to a floppy if his machine has one or burn to a CD. Then before he goes to bed, start it and let it run overnight. Check in the morning if there are any errors. This is supposed to be a pretty reliable memory tester from what I read.

http://www.memtest86.com/download.html

If one just types "memtest86.com", there is someone who is selling bootable CDs for $9.99. The above download is free.

[Matt Meiser]

So does the dump screen have a stop code? My wife's computer was doing something similar on Win7. I got the stop code, did some googling and found that for that particular machine it was caused by a bad device driver for the wireless card. I updated that and everything was good.

[glenn bradley]

I didn't know anyone still ran Vista. Even Microsoft tried to pretend it never happened ;). If you can't go to Windows 7, go back to XP SP-3. You can always go to another OS if you don't mind the learning curve. I run just about one of everything between home and work. All systems have their issues and just like tools, most do one thing better than another (think of a combo blade versus a dedicated function blade on your tablesaw, which works better?). If you want to stay with Vista and fight the good fight, yes, driver issues would be where I would start. Best suggestion is to move past Vista; it was a mistake and no one should be required to live with it. JMHO. :)

[paul cottingham]

Memtest is very good. If you can find a bootable version of prime95 it is a very good memory tester as well as a stress tester. Every machine we sold were torture tested with these two apps before they went out the door. If there were failures, the results helped analyze them.

[Clarence Martin]

It did it again about an hour ago. Some sort of Kernel Page error . What is that ?

[Chuck Wintle]

It did it again about an hour ago. Some sort of Kernel Page error . What is that ?
run memtest 86 or memtest 86+ to start with. download the iso for either one and burn to cd. boot the computer with the cd in the drive. if that is clean then the memory is good. look at the hard drive next....run disk cleanup and then disk defragmenter.

[Troy Turner]

I'm on the memory test bandwagon. Being 6 yrs old, may be time for another memory stick...not hard at all to replace. Find out how much your computer can hold and max it out.

Definantly go ahead and back up your files. Worse cases scenario is you may have to reload your operating system. But as others have said, get away from Vista and upgrade to Win7.

[Chuck Wintle]

:mad:


Don't know what it is with Vista, but 4 to 5 times every day!! I get the dreaded BLUE SCREEN, the computer freezes up for a good 5 minutes, runs through the crash dump, shuts down and restarts. Sometimes it happens with firefox, but it usually is when running Google Chrome.

Ran the Virus check, Malware check, everything is ok.


What is going on with it ??
I forgot to ask if this is a recent problem or its been happening for a long time. also can you run sfc for c drive to see if any files are messed up. do you have any other errors popping up?

[Myk Rian]

I had random BSODs a few years ago. It turned out to be the high dollar Antec power supply wasn't worth the high dollars.
I swapped it for a cheapie I had recovered from another machine, and it's been fine ever since.

[Greg Portland]

dell demensions E521 No additions to the computer. It's factory stock. About 6 years old.
Dell uses cheap power supplies in that line of PC. As Tom mentioned, the memory DIMMs can also become dislodged slightly.

Recommendation: Start the computer in safe mode w. networking and use Chrome. If it crashes then it's likely your power supply or the memory chips. Reseat the memory and then try getting a good power supply. If it is stable then it might be an errant driver. It would be easiest at that point to do a clean install of Windows...