I've had some recent problems with random blue screens, and start-up freezes (got to desktop, but cursor remained with the "thinking" icon and nothing responded). Initially there were only the start-up freezes, which started about 2-3 weeks ago. They've gotten so often that i had to manually shut down the computer 3-4 times before it would start. My desktop at the time was pretty unorganized, and i hadn't performed a scan or defrag in months, so I thought it was time. Re-organized my whole computer, freed about 200gbs of space (including about 50 from the desktop), defrag, scanned, ATF-cleaned it and it was working pretty well, at least for a few days. After that I started getting the start-up freezes again, so I got rid of all the start-up services which I didn't use, and opened the case and dusted the components (careful not to touch anything, vacuumed from 1cm above). Again, 2-3 days it worked, but yesterday it started freezing again. Also, 2 days ago I got a Blue screen, didn't read what it was about, but the second time I got it, there was a mentioning of "atikmdag.sys" file, which I'm not sure what is about. Yesterday I had about 5 bsods, and now it crashed 5 times in the last 30 minutes, either blaming the "atikmdag.sys" file or this other report:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 50
BCP1: FFFFF8A00C9F6000
BCP2: 0000000000000000
BCP3: FFFFF80003545079
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1
Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\070112-15038-01.dmp
C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-24320-0.sysdata.xml
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C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt
I didn't keep the "atikmdag.sys" bsod report, but I can upload the minidump if necessary.
Also, unrelated to this (I think - it's been going on for the last year or so), sometimes the pc fails to get to the welcoming screen on start-up, just freezes in a black screen and nothing happens. I've had a lot of problems with my old graphics card (just wasn't compatible with my system, lots of freezes and lost files), so I exchanged it about a year ago with a Sapphire Radeon HD6800. This one didn't make my life [bleep] like the old one did, but it started giving me these black screen freezes, which happen once every 2-3 days or so.