I’m getting blue screens about once a day. It’s always while on the Internet. I use IE, but I tried Chrome since IE 10 appears to be a mess, but the blue screen problem is even worse on Chrome. Anyway to figure out what’s actually causing it and fix it? It’s not like the blue screens say “you’ve got a virus” or “that Chrome add-on is flaky”/
Since you’re talking IE10, I’m guessing you’re also talking Windows 7 or 8.
I haven’t had to debug a recurring blue screen on any of my Win 7 systems, so I don’t know if this recommendation is applicable to your situation, but I have done some elementary debugging on Windows XP using WhoCrashed, which analyzes the crash dump the OS generates after a BSOD. It advertises itself for “intermediate to advanced” users, which makes sense since the dump analysis displays what module (driver, DLL, etc.) cause the fault, and a Windows novice wouldn’t have any idea what to do with that information.
User-mode programs like Chrome can’t directly cause a BSoD. BSoDs can (in theory) only be caused by stuff running kernel-mode; e.g. OS itself, hardware drivers, and other things which need privileged access such as virus scanners.
Though I’d be willing to bet dollars to donuts that you’ve got a buggy or old graphics driver. AFAIK both Chrome and IE10 use accelerated drawing and could be triggering a bug in the graphics driver, causing the whole house of cards to come crashing down.
It’s Windows 7 on a 1 year old laptop, integrated HD3000 graphics.
I ran Whocrashed?
It’s almost always the module ntoskrnl.exe, with occasional ntkrnlmp.exe
Some errors are "driver power state failure (the most common when I come back and it’s crashed), “Kmode exception not handled” and IRQL not less or equal (the ones I got trying out Chrome)
There are forums where you can post your crash logs. Helpful people will try to sort out your problem for you. The first two that turned up with a google search:
http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/96879-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html
http://www.techspot.com/community/topics/before-posting-your-minidumps-please-read-this.51365/
I used one a while back - people were nice and seemed to know what they were talking about but in my case I had to figure my problem out for myself because it was really obscure (an old buggy driver from a wireless USB adapter was to blame).
those can be a red herring; drivers can load into another process’s address space, and if that driver bombs it takes down the hosting process and the BSoD shows the hosting process, not the module that actually caused the crash. running the memory dump through the kernel debugger can help narrow down the actual culprit.
Well, I tried techspot with no luck, they moved my post to the antivirus forum not keeping it on the blue screen forum. The computer keeps getting worse and worse, so I’m wondering if it’s time for a new one even though it’s only a year old.
Changing PCs is a last resort.
Have you tried using it in Safe Mode? Press F8 repeatedly while the computer is in initial startup; in the choices that appear, select “Safe Mode with Networking”. Some features will not work, but you should be able to use IE and Chrome for an hour or two, long enough to find out if the Blue Screen occurs.
You mentioned that one of the exceptions was “driver power state failure”. Leave the laptop plugged in, go to Control Panel - System - Power Options and disable some auto-sleep features (Turn screen off - Never; Turn hard disks off - Never; etc.). See if any of them resolved the Blue Screens.
Also, try disconnecting USB or Bluetooth peripherals, where possible.
If your computer is not set for Automatic Updates, go to Windows Update try installing the high-priority updates. While you’re there, see if the optional updates contain any device driver suggestions, and try those (one at a time).
If you know when the Blue Screens started occurring, maybe you can revert the computer to a Restore Point prior to that date, using System Restore. This will not hurt your documents but you may need to reinstall some programs afterwards (carefully, one at a time).
The next-to-last resort is reinstalling Windows (probably from the computer’s recovery partition); the laptop’s manual should include something about factory recovery. But a factory recovery wipes out all installed software and all documents, so you’d need backup copies of those.
And if it still crashes after that, it’s probably a hardware problem and it’s time to go shopping for a new laptop.
Before you make any hard to test changes to your system, it’s worth testing the memory - it could just be faulty memory chips or even a badly seated memory module - the probnlem may only be provoked by certain bits of software that try to use the system memory in a certain way.
Not so easy with a laptop, but there should be an access door on the underside of the body which unscrews to reveal the memory modules.
If there is only one memory module, reseat it by taking it out and reinstalling it (observe proper antistatic precautions, and obviously, this is done with the machine off - probably with the battery removed too) , then test to see if the BSOD problem persists.
If it does, it could be worth running Memtest86 - you can download this and make a bootable CD or USB stick of it, then start up your machine running it and it will exhaustively test the memory.
If there are two memory modules, it’s easier - uninstall one of them and test for BSOD - if it still happens, reinstall the module and take out the other one and test again, or just run Memtest86 with them both installed.
Yeah, this may be the worst case scenario, but in my experience hardware problems are the most likely cause of BSODs on modern PCs.
Since the release of WinXP, I’ve only had three bouts of BSODs, all were hardware related:
- Trying to connect an old Motorola Cable Modem via USB (replacement unit worked fine).
- A dying PSU.
- The memory controller in an AMD CPU being incapable of supporting 4 modules of RAM. (My current PC. Runs 2x8GB=16GB modules fine, but 4x2GB=8GB would cause a BSOD approximately every two weeks).
download the memtest86+ ISO, boot from it, and see if you get any errors. I’ve seen bad RAM (even new stuff) cause random and frequent crashes.
Hi, did you check your HD? Chrystaldiskinfo is a tool that gives you loads of info on your disk.
Replacing a dieing hd is a 10 min job. Reinstalling windows takes a bit longer. Your local computer shop shouldn’t charge much more than 150$ for the whole job + a new hdd.
In any case back up all you data NOW.
(Bad hdd are a very common cause of bsod)
Hi, I appreciate the responses.
I’ve kind of had the idea of replacing the HD anyway with a SSD, but I don’t have any OS discs to reinstall windows, and I don’t want to put any money into the laptop if it’s actually bad. So I’m kind of weighing my options now. The RAM is name brand (Crucial) and did work initially, but I should probably check it anyway. My important data is also saved on a NAS so I’m not too worried about suddenly losing data.
Last time I had a computer with a reoccurring BSOD, it was because the fan was broken and it kept overheating. Took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out.
Those BSODs you’re getting. Can you post them? They’ll be accompanied by a STOP message followed by a number in hexadecimal (e.g. STOP 0x0000007F) then another four numbers in hexadecimal. The first number is critical, the other four can be very useful. There may be some flavour text. Ignore the rest. Google the STOP number.
With regards to testing, Memtest is a good start, but I’ve found that it’s unreliable. Prime 95 will test both CPU and memory.
Here’s a sampling of them.
When I come back and it’s crashed it’s usually a driver power state failure, random crashes while web browsing are usually kmode, whatever that is.
Module: ntkrnlmp.exe (nt!KeBugCheckEx+0x0)
Bugcheck code: 0x1E (0xFFFFFFFFC0000005, 0xFFFFF800031D7CDA, 0x1, 0x18)
Error: KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
Module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0x50 (0xFFFFF8A096496000, 0x0, 0xFFFFF80002EDF43A, 0x0)
Error: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
Module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0x1E (0xFFFFFFFFC0000005, 0xFFFFF80002E7326B, 0x0, 0x7EFA0000)
Error: KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
Module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0x9F (0x3, 0xFFFFFA8007A56060, 0xFFFFF800048053D8, 0xFFFFFA800AAE21D0)
Error: DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE
Module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0x9F (0x3, 0xFFFFFA8007B1FA10, 0xFFFFF80000B9C3D8, 0xFFFFFA800DF40C60)
Error: DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE
Module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0x9F (0x3, 0xFFFFFA8007A59A10, 0xFFFFF800048203D8, 0xFFFFFA800B9F8010)
Error: DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE
Module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0xA (0xDC, 0x2, 0x1, 0xFFFFF80002F02E45)
Error: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0x1E (0xFFFFFFFFC0000005, 0xFFFFF80002EA926B, 0x0, 0x7EFA0000)
Error: KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
Module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0x9F (0x3, 0xFFFFFA8007B3CA10, 0xFFFFF80000B9C3D8, 0xFFFFFA800F691C60)
Error: DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE
if “ntoskrnl” or “ntkrnlmp” are actually crashing, then bad hardware might be at fault. it’s quite possible, though, that (as I said above) something else running in kernel mode is crashing and the bugcheck is misleadingly pointing to the kernel processes as being at fault.
is your system set up to save memory dumps (either full or mini?)
(bolding mine)
You can download a Windows 7 ISO here - this page gives full instructions on reinstalling Windows from it. I’m assuming you have the legitimate Windows key somewhere on your laptop - probably on the underside.
Don’t know if this might apply to you, but…