How I approach BSOD!

[donetao]

Hi Once again, I'm not sure where this thread belongs. Please move or delete if a thread like this is all ready posted on the forum or is not appropriate !! This is the way I approach Blue Screens. BSOD can be very hard to solve as they can be caused by hardware or software issues.
Hi Here's a shot in the dark. Go into your Reliability Monitor and see if it will give you a clue. Also might want to see if Who Crashed can help!
http://www.resplendence.com/whocrashed
Down load Who Crashed from Major Geeks!
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/whocrashed_free_home_edition.html
Here's how to use the Reliability Monitor in W7
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/windows-7-reliability-monitor/
I hope some thing in my reply helps with your issue. The first thing I probably would do is up date your graphics driver.
This link should work for that if you have AMD. I'm not a big fan of up dating drivers if it ain't broke, however the graphics driver is a different story
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/auto-detect-tool



Hi There are many reasons why your PC Blue Screens. It's trying to protect its self. You might give your PC a good cleaning for dust build up. Here's some more reasons for BSOD!
Heat and drivers are a major cause for Blue Screens. Please add your thoughts or ideas to this thread!! Once you determine whether it's software or hardware, it gets easier to solve the problem!
http://www.resplendence.com/whocrashed_troubleshooting
PS I'm always ready to learn new things, so please add you thoughts or suggestions to this thread and make it a team effort!

 

[allheart55 (Cindy E)]

Good write up, Gary. It contains useful information.

I use Who Crashed frequently but it's definitely not for novices.

Although Major Geeks is completely safe to download from, I usually use the manufacturers website when possible.

http://www.resplendence.com/downloads

 

[donetao]

Hi! Sense no one is replying, I'll add more of my thoughts. Blue Screens can be caused by software or hardware. Here's some things you can do to test your hardware. You can do a chkdsk. You can also do a Memory diagnostic test. You can run Hot CPU tester. You can run Driver verification if you can't identify the driver which will help Who Crashed identify the driver for you. I will think some more about this and add later!
http://www.resplendence.com/whocrashed_verifier
I like to up date the graphics driver if your having BSOD. Here's a great link for that!
http://www.howtogeek.com/135976/how-to-update-your-graphics-drivers-for-maximum-gaming-performance/

 

[donetao]

Thanks Cindy. I thought about using the authors site, but you have to scroll down to find Who Crashed in your link.
Resplendence makes some more good software in the link you provided. It's always better to use the authors website when you can find it!
Thanks Cindy!!

 

[Rich-M]

You can actually get software to read the dumps as the MVP's do but its long and involved process.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...of-death/0d7522e3-4ed1-448e-bda6-66441f042c0c
It is so much easier to just Google the error code and you will get enough answers to easily zero in on the issue possibilities.

 

[allheart55 (Cindy E)]

Rather than go through the long and painful procedure of reading the dump files, Who Crashed, does it for you, Rich.

It works much better and is far simpler than using the MS Debugging tool.

 

[donetao]

Rather than go through the long and painful procedure of reading the dump files, Who Crashed, does it for you, Rich.

It works much better and is far simpler than using the MS Debugging tool.

I'm just learning about Who Crashed. Only worked on a couple of PC's that had crashes. One seemed to fix its self and the other one seemed good after up dating the graphics card. I really like Who crashed. Those error codes leave a lot to be desired as far as I'm concerned. Mine crashed one time after I added a wireless receiver trying to get a better down load speed. My PC didn't like that receiver. Some times my computer vocabulary leaves a lot to be desired. Hope you get the drift of what I'm trying to say!

 

[donetao]

Has anyone had experience with driver verifier??
http://www.resplendence.com/whocrashed_verifier

 

[Rich-M]

The Security Mods and MVPs on TSF always use "Driver Verifier".

 

[lurkingatu2]

i use BlueScreenView from Nirsoft there is a lot of good freeware tool's there like HashMyFiles that i use to calculate the MD5 and SHA1 hashes
of my download when needed

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/index.html

and do not forget Bug Check Code Reference

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh994433(v=vs.85).aspx



James

 

[allheart55 (Cindy E)]

Another good tool. Thank you, James! I've used the MS Reference Codes many times.

 

[donetao]

It has been my experience Goggling the error gets you better information, but that's just my opinion!
Ox0000005. Here's one I'm working on!! I'm trying to learn about BSOD's. My choice at this moment is Who Crashed.
http://www.updatexp.com/0xC0000005.html
PS Here's a link that I think is better than Microsoft's error codes! Just MHO!!
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ht/stoperrors.htm

 

[lurkingatu2]

will this help this seems like a common error

Access Violation? How dare you

SOURCE : http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2008/06/03/access-violation-how-dare-you.aspx

I am sure we have all seen access violations occur since we took ownership of our first x86 PC's. The infamous "Bluescreen", application crashes, it doesn't really matter, access violations are all over the place. For any of you that remember the good old Windows 9x days, a General Protection Fault and Invalid Page Fault are basically the same thing (and a segmentation fault too). To many people, the phrase 'access violation' is synonymous with "crash". But what exactly is an access violation?

To put it simply, an access violation occurs any time an area of memory is accessed that the program doesn't have access to. This can be due to bad code, faulty RAM or even a bad device driver. It really doesn't matter who the culprit is, the root issue is basically the same. For instance, memory location zero is reserved for the operating system, so any application that tries to access this address will crash with an access violation. The problem with this is that it is very easy to end up with a value of zero. If you set a pointer and initialize the value to NULL (which is 0), then try to access it, you will crash in this fashion. We call this a NULL Pointer and it is very common. The error you will receive should be similar to the following:

Unhandled exception at 0x00032b15 in Application.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x00000000

This states that the program Application.exe, which was loading at the arbitrary address 0x00032b15, attempted to read address 0x00000000. The code 0xC0000005 is the code for access violation,so expect to see this quite a bit. In a memory or user dump, you may see if referred to as STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION. This type of error can occur when either reading or writing, so it is pretty common. Below is an example of how this may look in a bugcheck dump, by simply doing a "!analyze -v". In this case, it was due to a driver fault causing an access violation.

You will also get an access violation if a program triggers Data Execution Prevention (DEP). This is a feature that uses both hardware and software to minimize the threat of malicious code like viruses. How this works is that memory locations can be marked as being used either for executable code or for data. Viruses commonly dump their payload into a data location and then execute it from there (like in a buffer overflow scenario). This is exactly what DEP is designed to prevent. If something tries to execute code from a data location, DEP will trigger an access violation to protect the system. The reason this is important to us is that some applications do the same thing simply due to the application's programmer not quite following the rules. For instance, if an application dynamically generates code, such as in a Just-In-Time scenario, and do not explicitly mark the code as executable, they will run into the Wall of DEP



James

 

[donetao]

Hi! Free PC Help Forum is my love and my home, but Tim Fisher is my hero and my go to guy when I'm having problems!

 

[donetao]

Thanks James! Just a tad over my head, but I will learn these things if the creek don't rise!!
As stated above here's my go to guy!!

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ht/stoperrors.htm