Blue Screen problem with Windows 7 Home Basic

Question

I have a Dell Inspiron N4110 which came pre-installed with Windows 7 Home Basic which I have been using for more than 2 years now. The problem started appearing first when I updated the Internet Explorer 9 to 10. The system suddenly shows a blue screen and restarts by itself when I run Explorer for more than a few minutes. At first I ignored this problem and switched back to Google Chrome. And I did not get much problems other than the tabs freezing in Chrome after this. Then about 5 months ago I bought a new Bitdefender Antivirus and had similar problem while installing it. Before the completion of the setup a bluescreen appears and restarts. But after the restart Bitdefender appears to work fine. (I uninstalled it very soon because I was using Bluestacks)

Then recently I tried updating Bluestacks and after the update it said that my display drivers were out of date and I need to update them. So I just followed the wizard there and updated just my Intel Display Driver (I have on board Intel graphics and a dedicated AMD Radeon graphics card). Then when I restarted my system the display was fine till the login screen but was unreadable once I logged in. So I thought there was a problem with the driver and tried different drivers from Dell website none of which I could install because I could not remove the installed driver. So finally I tried reinstalling the OS and installing the display driver from my Resource Disk I got with the laptop, after the restart the bluescreen appears and keeps on restarting. If i restore it to the point before the driver was installed everything is fine (not everything obviously).

Can anyone please help me with this?

Answer 1

Some system corruption may have occurred between updating IE, yes. Whether it was during that specific upgrade itself, some form of OS corruption itself between then, etc, is unknown. Given you've tried various different nVidia driver versions, we can try a clean install of the OS for two reasons:

1. A clean install with nothing but the latest drivers, Windows updates (minus Optional updates and irrelevant ones such as IE, etc), and NO 3RD PARTY SOFTWARE SUCH AS ANTIVIRUSES is a great way to rule out hardware aside from the diagnostics I've listed.
2. If you are on a clean install of Windows and you're BSOD'ing with *116's after a latest video card driver install, the problem is hardware and the laptop will need to be serviced.

Regards,

Patrick

Answer 2

Hi,

In order to assist you, we will need the DMP files to analyze what exactly occurred at the time of the crash, etc.

If you don't know where DMP files are located, here's how to get to them:

 1.    Navigate to the %systemroot%\Minidump folder.

 2.    Copy any and all DMP files in the Minidump folder to your Desktop and then zip up these files.

 3.    Upload the zip containing the DMP files to Skydrive or a hosting site of your choice and paste in your reply.

If you are going to use Skydrive but don't know how to upload to it, please visit the following:

http://www.wikihow.com/Use-SkyDrive

Please note that any "cleaner" programs such as TuneUp Utilities, CCleaner, etc, by default will delete DMP files upon use.

If your computer is not generating DMP files, please do the following:

1. Start > type %systemroot% which should show the Windows folder, click on it. Once inside that folder, ensure there is a Minidump folder created. If not, CTRL-SHIFT-N to make a New Folder and name it Minidump.
2. Windows key + Pause key. This should bring up System. Click Advanced System Settings on the left > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Advanced > Ensure there's a check-mark for 'Automatically manage paging file size for all drives'.
3. Windows key + Pause key. This should bring up System. Click Advanced System Settings on the left > Advanced > Startup and Recovery > Settings > System Failure > ensure there is a check mark next to 'Write an event to the system log'.

Ensure Small Memory Dump is selected and ensure the path is %systemroot%\Minidump.

4. Double check that the WERS is ENABLED:

Start > Search > type services.msc > Under the name tab, find Windows Error Reporting Service > If the status of the service is not Started then right click it and select Start. Also ensure that under Startup Type it is set to Automatic rather than Manual. You can do this by right clicking it, selecting properties, and under General selecting startup type to 'Automatic', and then click Apply.

If you cannot get into normal mode to do any of this, please do this via Safe Mode.

Regards,

Patrick

Answer 3

Thank you for replying.

I don't have all the dmp files of all the crashes that occured right now because as I have said I have reinstalled Windows.

So here is what I have ath the moment.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/walfnmlg5yk7y2r/010814-31075-01.dmp

Thanks again.

Answer 4

Unfortunately, the dump you've attached is corrupt. Next time you crash, please link that latest crash and hopefully it's not corrupt.

Regards,

Patrick

Answer 5

Actually even after I reinstalled Windows it kept crashing 4-5 times when I tried to install the drivers again and again. So even I am surprised to see just the one .dmp file in there.

So I'll install the drivers again and try now.