BSoD etc,.. what to do?

[john.med]

Have been having the old BSoD lots recently on a 3 yr old DELL laptop. Did a bit of research into the cause, and all I could find was the memory seemed to be the culprit.

I did a clean install of Windows 7 and have installed nothing but a touchpad driver and iTunes and the BSoD is still here!!!!

Do I replace the memory (I'm guessing that's the RAM sticks) or just throw the b*****d thing away and re-mortgage and buy a Mac?

Help...

 

[Magic Johnson]

Don't buy a MAC whatever you do lol.

Has it got two ram chips?

 

[john.med]

Just the one that I can see mate. One stick, with 4 chips on it... If that makes sense

 

[Magic Johnson]

Damn, can't really test it then. Mind you if it's a Dell they sometimes have a built in memtest.

Press F12 as soon as you boot and it should take you in to the boot menu. There might be a Memory Diagnostics option.

If not, stop being a cheapskate and fork out for some new RAM, cheap as chips.

 

[john.med]

I don't mind buying some RAM, just wasn't sure if it would a) fix the problem and b) be worth spending money on.

Thanks for the help BTW.

 

[Silent_Scone]

http://www.memtest.org/

 

[Magic Johnson]

I'm assuming he can't get past the boot stage, if he's only got 1 stick no way to test it, unless as I said Dell have it built in.

 

[Silent_Scone]

memtest is bootable you don't have to be in windows to use it - although it's a bit dated now

 

[john.med]

Pressed f12 and am doing a diagnostic pre-boot system assessment build memory test jobbie. It passed the short test, now doing the full test. I've burnt that memory test to a cd before and run it without it finding a problem... Shall I just buy new ram anyway?

 

[@Spoonie]

Most BSODs are caused by software not hardware.

 

[Magic Johnson]

More details on the BSOD please.

 

[john.med]

I got this from the last one I saw:

IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL ***STOP: 0x0000000a etc

 

[@Spoonie]

Do you have a MEMORY.DMP file? Usually it will be written to C:\WINDOWS after restart.

 

[Magic Johnson]

touchpad driver
That's your problem.

 

[john.med]

Seriously? Can I use an older driver, or just uninstall the driver and be done?

 

[Magic Johnson]

Uninstall it, try the Dell website for a later one. Your BSOD is a driver performing an illegal operation, you say it happened after installing the touchpad driver, so that's most likely it.

 

[Silent_Scone]

if it were that last known good configuration usually sorts it on F8.

Although tbh IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL usually relates to hardware failure memory/cpu related

what memory is it Jon? I've got a bag full of sticks laying around

 

[Magic Johnson]

No it doesn't, you need to go in via safemode, restore it to before you installed the driver. LKC never works.

 

[@Spoonie]

Although tbh IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL usually relates to hardware failure memory/cpu related

No it doesn't.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Usually works here

If it won't boot at all, it triggers HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet and reverts back. That's if it were the driver

 

[Silent_Scone]

No it doesn't.

Orly? It'll either be faulty ram or an IRQ conflict with his touchpad

 

[@Spoonie]

LKG is overwritten after you logon. If you install a new driver and it doesn't boot it shoudl work. If you install new driver, logon and then LKG probably won't work.

 

[Magic Johnson]

^

It's definitely your touchpad driver. Safe mode > system restore > install newer driver, bing bang bosh, done.

 

[Silent_Scone]

I thought it was in a reboot loop, hadn't read he's managed to login at all

 

[@Spoonie]

Orly? It'll either be faulty ram or an IRQ conflict with his touchpad

Yep really, If you are interested its usually because something has corrupted kernel memory causing bad memory pointers. When those invalid pointers are referenced a page fault occurs as the system sees that as memory as invalid and thinks it need to page it in. As page faults can only be serviced at IRQL 0 or 1 any request to do this at a higher IRQL results in the STOP hes seeing.

Believe me, bad drivers cause this to happen more than hardware.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't it normally appear as DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL?

 

[john.med]

So I'll enter safe mode and do a system restore... Will this wipe my hard drive again?

 

[@Spoonie]

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't it normally appear as DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL?

According to the earlier post this one is STOP 0xA which is IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

 

[Magic Johnson]

So I'll enter safe mode and do a system restore... Will this wipe my hard drive again?

No mate, it won't affect any files or folders. Just restore your machine to before you installed that driver. It will reboot itself.

That is...if you have SR enabled!

 

[john.med]

I tried safe mode and restore, downgrading and updating driver etc. Deleting and updating from dell's site too. God knows what I've done. I appreciate the help tho. Thanks.

 

[Magic Johnson]

Did it work?

 

[john.med]

Don't know yet, havent had a chance to use it much.

Thanks again.

 

[john.med]

Well it appears to be fixed. Hope I'm not tempting fate. Thanks oncemore.

 

[john.med]

OKAY OKAY: Spoke too soon. Had me a nice BSoD again, was a *** STOP 0x00000019 or something like that.

HELP! It's doing my nut in now.

 

[Silent_Scone]

pm me ram type like I say I've got loads of odd sticks you can test

 

[john.med]

This is the memory stick, front and back mate...

Okay, iFAIL.

This is a link to the pics:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7903166@N03/4856941880/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7903166@N03/4856323999/

 

[@Spoonie]

Just out of interest was there a memory dump created? I am happy to review it if you have one. Will usually be in C:\WINDOWS or C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263 gives some details on running through this yourself but its limited.

 

[john.med]

There's 4 dmp files in there, PM me your email addy and I'll fire them over. Ta!