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

[DaveTN]

To all the Apple/Mac users…

We don’t hate you.

Most of us don’t use Windows or Dells (or any other PC brand) because we love them.

Many of us use them because of the fields we work in.

Mac owns the graphic arts industry. Windows owns the Engineering and manufacturing industries.

If you need to draw pictures, check your email and surf the web; a Mac is great.

If you need to build models in engineering packages, interface models with aerospace and automotive customers, program CNC machines and exchange those programs with customers, and interface machine controllers, all while checking your email and surfing the web; you need a PC.

Mac may someday take Windows down as the OS with the largest customer base on earth. And when they do that it will be fine because it means they are capable of doing all the heavy lifting; but that’s not right now.

[Peace]

I'm no hater of PCs, but they sure hate me.  I have to use one for work as well.

 

     The only reason I have stayed with Mac/Apple is the same reason most creative industry folks do.  It is because of the firmware/hardware relationship ... and how Msoft has (or rather has not) handled that relationship.

 

     Apple (for the most part) has 1 hardware configuration for each model release = 1 set of drivers = 1 update package.  It is cleaner, and tends to (not alwasy) result in more up-time with less firmware relationship trouble.  ... and we all know about relationship trouble.  

 

     I don't care what hand-polished-unobtanium, radon-core marketing crud apple puts in the market.  If they start becoming unreliable, and if anyone else figures out how to manage that hardware/firmware relationship better, the switch would be made, and very few tears would be shed.

 

**OP! Have you got your problems sorted out yet?  If so, what worked?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I've continuously had at least one mac since 1986 and continuously had at least one pc since 1995. I probably won't buy any more macs, and went on strike and refuse to program macs ever again. After all the years I have become very hostile to apple.

Since gates quit being active in day to day MS operations, IMO MS is foundering as well, for one problem crazily persisting in attempting to copy Apple. There are reasons PC customers prefer PC's, and it ain't because the customers want the PC to be just like a Mac, except klunkier with the most ham-fisted ludicrous mass marketing imaginable.. Edited December 2, 2013 by Lester Weevils

[JohnC]

This surprised me. I thought there were more Mac users out there and couldn't believe how many still use XP!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57614177-75/windows-8.1-overtakes-mac-os-x-10.9-among-desktop-os-users/?ttag=fbwl

[Jonnin]

windows still owns the games too.   Macs have been half decent since they moved to not quite unix back with os 10, but they still cost more across the board and still many games simply do not work on them, or have to be run through slow emulators.    Windows has a lot of problems, but 90% of them are caused by one of 2 things: illiterate users and bad drivers for offbrand hardware.   Mac still has a heavy hand on hardware vendors and drivers, so its not so easy for vendors to crank out garbage and sell it at worst buy to people that just don't know any better.   Instead, they pay up more and are forced to buy higher quality goods.  That is not a bad thing, but you can't blame the OS for sorry PC hardware, is the point.   And no one bothers to write much malware for mac, because the bulk of mac users make up what, 5% of the target systems?

 

If I had to do *actual work* on a computer, I would be happy with a mac if it had a quality (think, visual studio) set of tools.  I dunno if it does or not, last time I used one, it was like a bad 1984 rehash -- the tools were terribad.   I don't do legit work on my home pc, at least not much -- its a toy, and windows+pc is a better toy, always has been, more bang for the buck.

Edited December 2, 2013 by Jonnin

[LagerHead]

To all the Apple/Mac users…

We don’t hate you.

Most of us don’t use Windows or Dells (or any other PC brand) because we love them.

Many of us use them because of the fields we work in.

Mac owns the graphic arts industry. Windows owns the Engineering and manufacturing industries.

If you need to draw pictures, check your email and surf the web; a Mac is great.

If you need to build models in engineering packages, interface models with aerospace and automotive customers, program CNC machines and exchange those programs with customers, and interface machine controllers, all while checking your email and surfing the web; you need a PC.

Mac may someday take Windows down as the OS with the largest customer base on earth. And when they do that it will be fine because it means they are capable of doing all the heavy lifting; but that’s not right now.

 

 

I can do every bit of that PC stuff by running a Windows instance on a separate desktop inside of a VM all while still drawing pretty little pictures and surfing the web on my Mac, since that's all it's good for. ;) . Sorry, but for the 0.0000000000000000000000000000001% of the time I need a PC, it's not even close to being worth it to give up the reliability, speed, and pure joy of never seeing a BSOD ever again that is associated with owning a Mac. Proud owner of a 100% Windows free (except for my work-provided laptop) household. 

[DaveTN]

I can do every bit of that PC stuff by running a Windows instance on a separate desktop inside of a VM all while still drawing pretty little pictures and surfing the web on my Mac, since that's all it's good for. ;) . Sorry, but for the 0.0000000000000000000000000000001% of the time I need a PC, it's not even close to being worth it to give up the reliability, speed, and pure joy of never seeing a BSOD ever again that is associated with owning a Mac. Proud owner of a 100% Windows free (except for my work-provided laptop) household.

Then you are exactly like some of us; you couldn’t do your job without a Windows PC.
If you have to use Windows in a Mac; it’s Windows.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

If I had to do *actual work* on a computer, I would be happy with a mac if it had a quality (think, visual studio) set of tools.  I dunno if it does or not, last time I used one, it was like a bad 1984 rehash -- the tools were terribad.   I don't do legit work on my home pc, at least not much -- its a toy, and windows+pc is a better toy, always has been, more bang for the buck.

 

Hi Jonnin

 

Do you mostly program big iron, or are workstations your borderline between tool and toy?

 

People make a living programming so many thangs. Some folks spend all their time programming tiny embedded systems like microwave ovens, geetar stomp boxes or peripherals, and where would we be without them? :)

 

Nowadays, about the only sane IDE to program mac apps is with Apple's XCode IDE, which is about the same as any of the big IDE's. Visual Studio and XCode are about equally-featured as far as I care. Unless apple recently changed, a great deal of the tools under XCode's pretty face are GCC based.

 

The academic unix nerds tend to love macs because they are pretty well-built machines, which are pure unix underneath. Pleasing the fellas with the attitude, "Gimme a terminal and a command line and get the heck out of my way!" You can either control the underlying GCC with a command line, or you can click buttons and menus in XCode, which controls the GCC instead.

 

My gripes with apple--

 

-- They have shifted over to objective-c and cocoa, and I don't particularly like objective-c and cocoa.

-- Apple has always over-built every SDK, including a zillions possibilities that the average fella never needs to do, so that you have to do a lot of studying and then write too much code to do stuff that OUGHT to be simple.

-- They change SDK's like changing underwear, and don't care how many man-years of old third-party code they break in the process.

-- Horrible documentation. For every thing you want to do, there are a dozen historical ways to do it, and you can google variously ancient documentation for every dozen ways, so you have to weed thru attempting to find the current fashionable SDK, find adequate documentation on the current fashionable SDK, and cross your fingers that after you write your code that apple will at least wait a couple of years before they break it and replace it with yet another new improved way of creating a stupid button or popup menu. In the dim past the documentation was as excellent as you can find, but it's been going downhill for near 30 years now.

-- In summary it is a wonderful platform to program if you want to keep rewriting your application over and over, year in, year out, just to keep up with apple's coding fashion whims.

[JohnC]

Well, started it up this AM and this is what happened afterwards.



Is this looking like a hardware failure more than driver to you guys?

Bad video card?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro v2.2

[Garufa]

Video card is toast. 

[Jonnin]

Hi Jonnin

 

Do you mostly program big iron, or are workstations your borderline between tool and toy?

 

People make a living programming so many thangs. Some folks spend all their time programming tiny embedded systems like microwave ovens, geetar stomp boxes or peripherals, and where would we be without them? :)

 

Nowadays, about the only sane IDE to program mac apps is with Apple's XCode IDE, which is about the same as any of the big IDE's. Visual Studio and XCode are about equally-featured as far as I care. Unless apple recently changed, a great deal of the tools under XCode's pretty face are GCC based.

 

The academic unix nerds tend to love macs because they are pretty well-built machines, which are pure unix underneath. Pleasing the fellas with the attitude, "Gimme a terminal and a command line and get the heck out of my way!" You can either control the underlying GCC with a command line, or you can click buttons and menus in XCode, which controls the GCC instead.

 

My gripes with apple--

 

-- They have shifted over to objective-c and cocoa, and I don't particularly like objective-c and cocoa.

-- Apple has always over-built every SDK, including a zillions possibilities that the average fella never needs to do, so that you have to do a lot of studying and then write too much code to do stuff that OUGHT to be simple.

-- They change SDK's like changing underwear, and don't care how many man-years of old third-party code they break in the process.

-- Horrible documentation. For every thing you want to do, there are a dozen historical ways to do it, and you can google variously ancient documentation for every dozen ways, so you have to weed thru attempting to find the current fashionable SDK, find adequate documentation on the current fashionable SDK, and cross your fingers that after you write your code that apple will at least wait a couple of years before they break it and replace it with yet another new improved way of creating a stupid button or popup menu. In the dim past the documentation was as excellent as you can find, but it's been going downhill for near 30 years now.

-- In summary it is a wonderful platform to program if you want to keep rewriting your application over and over, year in, year out, just to keep up with apple's coding fashion whims.

 

My stuff is mostly "big embedded" whatever that means haha.  Full systems -- you can run windows etc on em these days, but still embedded, think PC-104 or these days, our current project has a tablet PC running windows 8 (razor? Or spelled different? ).

 

I do the work on a 6 year old PC running windows XP pro and an older version of visual studio.  Most of what I do is real time,  the bulk of it command and control (think remote operator) so message transmission, parse, and then convert that to the command to the hardware, etc.  Also some controls (mostly linear algebra but controls people like to make it overly complicated). 

 

I consider GCC to be 1980s tech.  If it needs a makefile, its broken, I am *done* with those aggravating things.  The IDE had better manage the project for me flawlessly, or I will not use it (given a choice of course).  If it does not have auto complete for object fields, I will not use it.   Just tried something called QT and you had to actually hand-write the handlers for GUI components, and the layout looks nothing like the actual result, it was awful, about like visual was --- version 2.0 for windows 3.1 ...     Visual has problems, but it can't be beat for handling the time waster stuff automatically and increasing productivity.  Older I get, the less patience I have with the hands-on unix way of doing things.   I don't want to micromanage every detail, I want the darn thing finished so I can move on.

[JohnC]

Restarted and it's working again. If I could just figure out the problem, I'd fix it. I'm just unsure if it's the video card/hardware or a driver/software issue.

[LagerHead]

Then you are exactly like some of us; you couldn’t do your job without a Windows PC.
If you have to use Windows in a Mac; it’s Windows.

 

Nope. I can do every bit of my job on a Mac. But my work won't provide one for me. When I am working at home I use my Mac and/or iPad. 

Edited December 5, 2013 by LagerHead

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Well, started it up this AM and this is what happened afterwards.



Is this looking like a hardware failure more than driver to you guys?

Bad video card?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro v2.2

 

I used to get that on a laptop with bad video hardware. It started out intermittent then got progressively worse until it didn't work at all.

[JohnC]

I used to get that on a laptop with bad video hardware. It started out intermittent then got progressively worse until it didn't work at all.

Great. This is going to cut in to my MEGA ARMS AR Pistil budget. :(

I configured this Dell XPS Studio a couple years back with the ATI Radeon 5770 I think it was. http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-5000/hd-5770/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-5770-overview.aspx#1

Wonder if I should replace it with the same or upgrade to newer better gfx card.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Well, not to be discouraging, but there is more circuitry in there than the video card. It isn't inconceivable that something in the mobo chipset is going bad, messing up the PCI communications to the card.

 

I haven't (luckily) had this problem for many years, knock on wood. But when I would build my own puters, using as best I could tell reputable brand boards, more than once pieces of the mobo would begin to fail after a couple of years. Maybe USB, or ethernet, or what have you would just get flakey, then not work at all, then time for a new mobo.

 

Maybe if you know somebody with an old but known-working video card, you could swap in a card without spending any money, just to make sure it will fix your problem?

Edited December 5, 2013 by Lester Weevils

[dralarms]

Thats a video card for sure.

[mav]

I would just upgrade the video card.  Unless you are gonna get the top end newest card, you can get cards that have been out for a year or so pretty cheap.  I am currently running two GTX 560 Ti (have had these a while), and I have no problem playing any game I want at 2560x1600 with high settings (not the highest) on my 30 inch monitor.

[analog_kidd]

Unplug the PC, and open up the case cover. Remove and replace every single card from its slot. There is a lot of heat going on in that case and sometimes the cards expand and contract and will work their way out of contact. Reseating the cards will ensure they are in properly. Take this opportunity to use come compressed air and clean out all the dust, especially in the heat sinks and the power supply.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

My stuff is mostly "big embedded" whatever that means haha.  Full systems -- you can run windows etc on em these days, but still embedded, think PC-104 or these days, our current project has a tablet PC running windows 8 (razor? Or spelled different? ).

 

I do the work on a 6 year old PC running windows XP pro and an older version of visual studio.  Most of what I do is real time,  the bulk of it command and control (think remote operator) so message transmission, parse, and then convert that to the command to the hardware, etc.  Also some controls (mostly linear algebra but controls people like to make it overly complicated). 

 

I consider GCC to be 1980s tech.  If it needs a makefile, its broken, I am *done* with those aggravating things.  The IDE had better manage the project for me flawlessly, or I will not use it (given a choice of course).  If it does not have auto complete for object fields, I will not use it.   Just tried something called QT and you had to actually hand-write the handlers for GUI components, and the layout looks nothing like the actual result, it was awful, about like visual was --- version 2.0 for windows 3.1 ...     Visual has problems, but it can't be beat for handling the time waster stuff automatically and increasing productivity.  Older I get, the less patience I have with the hands-on unix way of doing things.   I don't want to micromanage every detail, I want the darn thing finished so I can move on.

 

Thanks Jonnin

 

That sounds like a very fun job.

 

I too, prefer a luxurious IDE compared to text editor and make files. OTOH there are some pretty dang good text editors--

 

XCode is IMO as good an IDE as Visual Studio or its competitors. It is the MacOS that XCode is used in that chaps my butt, as previously complained about.

 

QT is a godsend for people saddled with the task of writing cross-platform apps without going crazy, at least in some categories. Mainly useful if one's customers are not militant intolerant GUI-police type people. Folks who will happily use the supplied buttons and menus without complaining, even if the controls don't happen to look exactly like Winders controls on winders, or Mac controls on Mac or whatever. Especially good for open source projects (where QT is free to use) but it gets kinda expensive if you are selling closed source product.

 

One of my favorite thangs though, is writing optimized asm, in the rare cases where a task requires going to the trouble. I've always loved asm. But so few tasks require it nowadays.

 

Its been a few years since I used Visual Studio. IIRC, think my last copy of VS is 2005. Are you certain that VS doesn't use the typical make files "under the covers" which a dedicated nerd could hand-write and command-line execute if he so desired? That is the relationship between XCode and GCC, or the Borland IDE's versus its underlying compilers. You can either use the IDE and let it manage the nasty stuff, or you can get your hands dirty and never use the IDE at all.

 

I've been near-exclusively writing shrink-wrap music applications for 18 years, and another 12 years before that except I never bothered to shrink-wrap them. :) Dunno nothin about databases, web apps, CAD, animation, whatever. Just audio, midi, GUI, and algorithms related to music theory. The folks I've been working with have used borland tools on PC and XCode on Mac, so that is what I use, except ain't gonna program Mac any more. I like the borland IDE's fine, and lots of 15 year old code still works great on PC. We have three full time programmers and a couple of part-time specialists, and maybe a dozen media people. If winders changed as quick and capriciously as Mac, we would be in a world of hurt because all the programmers we have would just be doing code maintenance full-time forever. NEW! Buy Now! Exact same features as last year, but the same old features still work in the latest version of the operating system!

[Jonnin]

You can use VS with a makefile -- it will import them sometimes if they are not unixed to death.  By default it uses an enhanced version (solution file) with more crap in it.  But I do not care what it does under the covers: I just like the project options checkbox type interface, blow&go project setup.  Its the hand editing of cryptic gibberish that I will no longer tolerate. 

 

I also like assembly.  VS allows you to poke it right in the code, and is a little flexible on how you use it too, you can for example tap the variable names from your high level code directly without having to do the address lookup and tedious bits.  I don't do much of that either, though one of the places I do it often is for network vs PC byte order (integer byte order issue).  The intel family has a command that will flip it in a register, faster and easier than the byte manipulation code.  

 

I can see QT for cross platform but its clunky and feels like what I had to use over 2 decades ago.   Cross platform is over-rated.  The mac and unix people *swear* that their emulation is better than running it directly on a PC.  Let em emulate it then, no need to go out of my way to use a junky tool when their virtual machine is sooooo much better than my PC.

[Armed Aviator]

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

 

 

Target practice??????

:rock:

[JohnC]

I removed the old AMD Radeon 5770 from my Dell XPS Studio Win7 Pro Desktop and put in a almost new AMD Radeon 7700 out of my Dell XPS Win8.1 Pro desktop because I figured the new AMD Radeon R9 270X would take better advantage of the newer faster Dell XPS Win 8.1 pro desktop.

I made sure to completely uninstall the old video card driver and all related crap and reinstall it from the AMD website.

Anyway, still having issues. I've not seen a blue screen again, but I have experienced crashes that windows automatically restart on and sometimes it freezes up.

So I'm sure this isn't a failing video car problem now.

So I went digging in the Win7 error logs and found a crap load of Windows Error Reports and Application Error reports.

I kept seeing pcdrcui.exe for the one of the app errors. I tried a fix and got a common.dll is missing. So I read more on that issue and found I could run a cmd [sfc /scannow] that automatically fixes these type of errors, but it found none.

So I'm confused at this point what the heck could be going on with this PC. Anymore ideas? :shrug:

[Oh Shoot]

.....
I kept seeing pcdrcui.exe for the one of the app errors. I tried a fix and got a common.dll is missing. So I read more on that issue and found I could run a cmd [sfc /scannow] that automatically fixes these type of errors, but it

 

PC Doctor? That come installed on the Dell? Perhaps uninstall it?

 

Also the restarts: fan  working okay, not overheating?

 

- OS

[JohnC]

PC Doctor? That come installed on the Dell? Perhaps uninstall it?
 
Also the restarts: fan  working okay, not overheating?
 
- OS

A lot of times I started the PC in the AM when the living room is like 68F and it immediately crashed, so not over heating. Fans run, too.