[Brennan C.]

Good morning, everybody,

About 3 times in the last week, my system has bluescreened. This is pretty disappointing, as I built this system almost two years ago, and have had no trouble with it at all. At first, I thought the problems were being caused by a new Firefox extension; I have since uninstalled said add-on and am still BSoD-ing. I can't remember the context for the earlier bluescreens this week, but I know that yesterday's happened while I was browing YouTube.

As far as I know, there's no way to screenshot a BSoD, so the error message escapes me before I can take a picture of it or do something to capture that information. If that data is stored locally, please advise me as to where I can find it so I can post it here to help us troubleshoot this nuisance.

My system specs are as follows:

OS: MS Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit SP2
CPU: AMD Phenom II X3 720
RAM: 4GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @401MHz
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P (Socket M2)
GPU: 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
HDD: 2x 640GB Western Digital ATA
Optical: TSSTcorp CD/DVD+-RW ATA
Browser: FF 5.0

Any help at all would be appreciated.

Please and thanks,

Brennan C.

[Advertisements]

Hi Brennan C
After looking at your specs, the symptoms and the watching youtube videos when it happened the last time it may be a video card issue and possibly the video memory.
Download and run http://www.nirsoft.n...creen_view.html post the results with your next reply.

[phillpower2]

Hi Brennan C
After looking at your specs, the symptoms and the watching youtube videos when it happened the last time it may be a video card issue and possibly the video memory.
Download and run http://www.nirsoft.n...creen_view.html post the results with your next reply.

[Brennan C.]

Hello, phillpower2,

I'm not exactly sure what data you wanted from me, so I screencaped the properties window of each of the two errors that it found:


Please let me know if you need other information.

- Brennan

[phillpower2]

Hi Brennan C sorry about the delay posting back.
Couple of suggestions for you to try 1: install the latest version of DX that your system will support (9 or 10 most likely) http://www.microsoft...aylang=en&id=35 and 2: check for updates and hotfixes for your GFX card, if you let us know the brand name of the card Sapphire, Powercolour etc we can look for the updates for you.
If neither of the above work the next items to check are the PSU, dust inside the case including removing and then reseating the GPU and Ram sticks, do you happen to know the make and model of your PSU.

[Brennan C.]

OK, I installed the version of DirectX you linked me to. As for updating my GFX drivers, I noticed something weird: My Device Manager indicated that the drivers I have installed (8.850.0.0) are newer than the drivers on MSI's website (8.723). I can't imagine that this is normal; the update function tells me that the GFX drivers are up-to-date, however.

I'll let you know if my system bluescreens in the next few days here, and then I'll try reseating my GFX card and RAM; I dusted out my case only a few weeks ago. My PSU is an Antec Earthwatts 650W, model number EA650.

Thanks for your help! :-D

[phillpower2]

Thanks for the update.

I noticed something weird: My Device Manager indicated that the drivers I have installed (8.850.0.0) are newer than the drivers on MSI's website (8.723). I can't imagine that this is normal; the update function tells me that the GFX drivers are up-to-date, however

Where did the presently installed GFX card drivers come from?
If the GFX card is a MSI branded one then using their latest drivers is appropriate as other brands tweak things in their own way and release their own hotfixes for example, that said if the new DX install resolves the issue then I would leave well alone.
The PSU is a good brand, quality and output so is less likely to be the cause.

[Brennan C.]

I assume that my current GFX drivers came from Windows Update; the last update for my GFX card came in on June 9th, 2011, and I haven't done any manual updating for it since then. The June 9th update is titled "ATI Technologies Inc. - Display - ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series". If I have any more trouble, I'll try rolling back to the latest drivers on the MSI site.

[Brennan C.]

FYI, Steam automatically updated my GFX drivers after I installed Portal 2, today. The update seems to have come from ATI/AMD; according to Device Manager, it has upgraded to version 8.861.0.0. Not sure how this will affect my BSoD situation, but I'll let you know if it happens again.

[phillpower2]

Thanks for the update and lets hope things stay positive for you.

Steam automatically updated my GFX drivers after I installed Portal 2,

That makes sense as I have never heard of Windows updating anything other than
Microsoft products, it also clears up the previous GFX updates so thanks for that also

[Brennan C.]

OK, so it's been about a month and a half since I've posted in this thread, but I got another BSoD while on YouTube today. I wasn't even watching a video; I had just opened a tab to browse my subscription box when it bluescreened.
Windows popped up with the following information when it started again:

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:	BlueScreen
  OS Version:	6.0.6002.2.2.0.768.3
  Locale ID:	4105

Additional information about the problem:
  BCCode:	a0000001
  BCP1:	0000000000000005
  BCP2:	0000000000000000
  BCP3:	0000000000000000
  BCP4:	0000000000000000
  OS Version:	6_0_6002
  Service Pack:	2_0
  Product:	768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
  C:\Windows\Minidump\Mini080311-01.dmp
  C:\Users\Brennan Conroy\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-65832-0.sysdata.xml
  C:\Users\Brennan Conroy\AppData\Local\Temp\WER1F3.tmp.version.txt

Read our privacy statement:
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=50163&clcid=0x0409

I copied that into this thread and hit "Check for solution," which has never done anything for me anyway, but whatever.

Also, based on earlier in the thread, I imagine you want to see this as well:

Also on startup, ATI prompted me to download the latest drivers; I imagine this bluescreen could be related to that, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me why it would just randomly bluescreen after running fine for several weeks. Anyway, ATI updated my GFX drivers to version 8.872.0.0, so we'll see what that does.

Any insight?