Windows 7 Pro Blue Screen Error, what is the fix?

[JohnC]

Well, this used to only happen when I was using IE and playing youtube videos, but I had just got up, turned on the PC, and then clicked MS Outlook to check my Email accounts and the blue screen appeared sometime after it downloaded my email.

Anyone know what the crap this means and how to fix it?

Recent crash:



The older crashes that I managed to get screen shots of:











Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro v2.2

[DaveTN]

If you can get past it; back everything up.
Blue screen of death is generally serious hardware issues or a corrupt OS.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/resolving-stop-blue-screen-errors-in-windows-7

[JohnC]

Lovely. I used this PC for all my heavy work. :\

 

I've had a Segate backup keeping scheduled backups. Do you think that's enough to restore from? Or should I also do a like Blu-ray backup of everything? 

Edited November 29, 2013 by JohnC

[Garufa]

I would start with the assumption that it is a problem with your video card driver.  Have you recently updated it?

 

Here are some steps you can follow to remove the driver http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-hardware/random-bsods-on-win-7-64-bit-caused-by-atikmdagsys/22405645-749b-4d62-92bb-e4710277c90d and reinstall.

 

I would also run a full check disk to identify and fix any disk errors.  Open a command prompt and type in chkdsk /F then reboot for it to run.

[JohnC]

There have been tons of MS updates lately, but none for the video card that I recall. 

 

I'll try the check disk next. :up:

[viscero]

They all appear to be driver related on the surface. The top one seems to reference a FireWire driver issue and MS even has a hot fix available for it if that really is the problem. The older ones definitely point to an Ati video card driver issue. Removing the video card drivers and software and then installing the latest version from amd.com would probably be a good first step.

You can usually just google the first stop error code and/or the referenced file such as 0x0000003b in the first screen capture or atikmpag.sys in the last two screen captures to find the most common issues and resolutions.

[Jonnin]

In my experience blue screens are usually bad drivers.  Try booting in safe mode, if that works, proceed to back up and then  roll back any recent driver updates.   Also loose hardware like a video card that is partly out of socket can do it.   check disk has some value though ntfs supposedly automatically avoids disk errors as it verifies files after writing them. 

 

a spare disk backup is fine.  Mirror the drive if you can, if not, get your data at least. 

 

A lesser known and rarely seen red screen means epic hardware failure.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Jonnin

[DaveTN]

Lovely. I used this PC for all my heavy work. :\
 
I've had a Segate backup keeping scheduled backups. Do you think that's enough to restore from? Or should I also do a like Blu-ray backup of everything?

I don’t use the Seagate software; I use Acronis; so I don’t know. I would guess it would be okay as long as you have everything backed up.

Hard drive failing, Ram failing, Video card drivers; could be anything; most all of it bad. Do you know when it started? After I knew I had everything backed up I would use either system restore, or if your backup software lets you reimage to a prior date, I would try that and see if it continues.

[mav]

I would start with the assumption that it is a problem with your video card driver.  Have you recently updated it?

 

I would agree.  I recently built a new computer, and I has having intermittent freezing that might last 5 - 10 seconds.  Every now and then it would freeze completely, and at times I would get the Blue Screen.  After trying a bunch of stuff and searching numerous forums, I found out that if you have an older video Nvidia card, such as a GTX 400 - 500 series , the last couple of Nvidia updates have bugs in them.  I uninstalled the latest driver and rolled it back to 314.22, and I have had zero problems since then.

[itchytriggerfinger]

It's just a driver problem. The hard part is figuring out which one it is. As others have said, it's probably a video driver. They are notorious for causing BSOD.

http://www.reviversoft.com/blog/2013/01/system-service-exception/

[JohnC]

it looks to definitely be a video hardware issue (prob driver).

 

chkdsk came out OK.

 

Defrag was 0%

 

Disk cleanup went well. 

Edited November 29, 2013 by JohnC

[Joseg]

Sometimes booting into safe mode and then restarting usually fixes it. Win7 is a pretty stable OS.. 

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Yep Win 7 is purt stable. Mostly the only things that can cause an actual blue screen are hardware failures and drivers. Most all other software runs at a higher-level that can malfunction, but can't blue-screen.

[Raoul]

It may be caused by the last MS "Critical" update. Totally fried me, I had to do a system restore.

[TerryW]

When I had a Win machine and kept getting too many BSOD's I would install a new HD and use the old one as an internal backup and that way I could retrieve all of my old data real easy before a format of the old drive. 

[dralarms]

Had that same stuff. Video card bad. But with 3 weeks of changing the video card the usb ports srarted failing.

[JohnC]

MS Win7 Pro had a bunch of video card/driver errors in the action center. Clicked the search for fix or whatever it's called and it supposedly lost connection to the server in the process.

I don't think it had a chance to repair anything, but so far no more crashes thus far. We shall see what happens as time goes on. :meh:

[Guest Riciticky]

Never, I said never ever trust windows!

[analog_kidd]

I always create two partitions on my computer hard drives. The first one is for the O/S and programs and is usually around 100 GB. The second partition is for data and is the rest of the free space. I wipe and reload Windows whenever it feels like it slows down. I only have to reformt the C: drive. When the O/S is reinstalled, all my data is still there. Of course I back up too, just in case.

[Sam1]

I always create two partitions on my computer hard drives. The first one is for the O/S and programs and is usually around 100 GB. The second partition is for data and is the rest of the free space. I wipe and reload Windows whenever it feels like it slows down. I only have to reformt the C: drive. When the O/S is reinstalled, all my data is still there. Of course I back up too, just in case.

 

I used to do all of that work, now we just use crashplan and don't have to back up anything nor do we care about anything crashing because it's all automated

[itchytriggerfinger]

Yeah, all of my data goes in my Google Drive folder and is automatically synced to the cloud. If my computer dies, I rebuild and it will pull everything back down.

[Peace]

carbon backup or the like. .... 1) clone the hard drive 2)clean and install os. 3) restore data/settings 4) switch to OSX and Mac. (kidding, couldn't help myself. actually just had a 5yr old mac w/ a logic board fail on me a couple of months ago) Edited December 1, 2013 by Peace

[Smith55]

Time to buy a Mac !

I did and i love it, but i had to keep a pc due to 3 programs that would not run on a Mac.

I did not install a windows sub??? on the Mac. I wanted to get away from windows.

 

Good luck with your problem.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Time to buy a Mac !
I did and i love it, but i had to keep a pc due to 3 programs that would not run on a Mac.
I did not install a windows sub??? on the Mac. I wanted to get away from windows.

Good luck with your problem.

VMware Fusion is great to run winders (or dos, or Linux, what have you) on Mac. Need a retail version of winders for it to work best. OEM version will be eventual problems. But unless your PC software demands a recent version, just hunt up an ancient retail version of xp or vista or even 98 or ME.

The only PC prgs not really fast enough are realtime intensive audio, midi, video programs or high performance games. Most audio video prgs will run kinda sorta OK on a fast Mac in fusion, but kinda like they would run on a slow winders machine or a netbook. Some things work surprisingly fast and elegant. One nice thing is that the entire win installation is only a folder with one or an assortment of a few image files. Depending if you want to split the image into 2gb sections for ease of backup on some file systems. It is more straightforward to backup and reinstall a vmware virtual machine config of winders, than backing up a real non virtual PC. Edited December 1, 2013 by Lester Weevils

[Fourtyfive]

The answer is an Apple , I didn't  want to say that cause I'm gonna catch hell for it. Yes , I keep one crippled Windows unit up and running just to get Publisher files off of and convert. God I wish Apple had a version of Publisher........no file will convert properly. I refuse to Boot Camp , otherwise I miss no part of Bill Gates and have had NO PROBLEMS IN 4 YEARS.

Edited December 1, 2013 by Threeeighty