Analysis of BSOD screen?

Hi Hatrick and Tmagic,

Its 845am Mon PST and the system has run clean overnight w/ no BSOD or error messages in Event Viewer. When I clicked on the Firefox Preloader icon, also no problems.

I am horrified at the thought of having to format and reinstall--absolutely not the news I wanted to hear considering the time involvement.

I understand and agree with the logic, but before I bite that bullet I'm going to wait for a couple of days to pass and see if I get BSOD'd again --- it seems like things have been slowly improving over the last several days as I've implemented all the suggestions, and whether I format/reinstall now or in a few days isn't going to make a difference as re the work involved. I'm just not quite ready to give up........

Thank you all again for your time and help. I will post again tomorrow AM if no problems before, or if theres another BSOD event before then

Hi TMagic, Hatrick and PowerCycle,

Per my last post I was going to wait till Tues AM, but.........

Its 940PM Mon. PST and I'm happy to report that the system has run utterly flawlessly since my rebooting from the last BSOD and taking the subsequent action re SpySweeper per my second post prior to this one ( 1/14 09:41 AM )

In Event Viewer, other than for " information" events mostly generated at a reboot, I have noticed nothing other than a single warning each for Events 8021 and 8022, and 1 error message for Event 8032. All of them mentioned "....failure to retrieve the backup browser list from the master browser on ...." the other computer on the network.

I have seen these messages before and can definitively state that none of them was generated anywhere near the time of occurrence of any of the BSODs ---- that was the first thing I went looking for after rebooting from all of the BSOD events.

I will post tomorrrow AM as to how the system ran overnight.

Would appreciate any/all of you letting me know you're still seeing my posts.

Thanks again to all for your time and input--its nice to know theres still people like you out there---members of , sadly, a seemingly increasingly scarce group of human beings willing to freely pass on to others the benefits of their knowledge and experience. Hopefully I will be able to reciprocate at some point in the future.

Congratulations. If it stays clean, give some thought to a disk imaging programme. You will wonder how you lived without it. As long as you can get into Windows, any errors, BDOD's, etc can be fixed with a few mouse clicks.

All the best.

Hi Hatrick,

Its now 8am Tue. PST and the system has run all night w/ no problem. Event Viewer showed nothing to be concerned over

I use Norton Ghost; what are your opinions of it as to being a good imaging program? Any alternative recommendations/suggestions?

Will post again tonight as to how things have gone for the day.

Wait to hear from you. Best, Peter

Hello Peter,

I use Drive Image, but they all work! Make an image now or, if you have to reinstall, then, and before every major, or suspect change. You'll never have two consecutive BSOD's.

I really ought to practice what I preach. <BG>

Yes Hattrick,
but creating an image from a "suspect" system is risky isn't it? Transferring the unstable OS, to another drive... Yikes!

Hi Hatrick and Tmagic,

My ghosts are made to D:\ My Documents which is a secondary IDE slave, and then at 430 AM daily, Smart Backup ( a wonderful utility which I recommend highly), backs that whole folder up to an external USB HD. ( G: )

All 3 HD's are 80gig 8MB cache Western Digital caviar 7200 rpm

I have 2 earlier ghosts on D: and G: now ( both of course flawed per the stuff this whole thread has been about), but have developed a little strategy to help cope with that. After making a ghost, I have always created a little Notepad file on the desktop called "changes since last ghost" and in it record every change I make in terms of things that should be kept track of so as to be able to differentiate between ghosts. I am attaching the current one so you can see what I'm talking about.

I have now had no issues since the last BSOD about 1030PM Sun. PST ( about 36 hrs ) and am waiting till at least 96 hrs have passed before making a new ghost. Meanwhile, as just mentioned, all significant changes are noted in the Notepad file, which then is transferred to the folder where the newest ghost will reside when its made.

Would like to know what you guys think of this strategy?

Wait to hear from you and will post again tonight with developments.

bBest, Peter

Peter,
your strategy seems solid. I have 5 separate hard drives in my system, and Norton 360 backs up my C drive changes daily... automatically to my external USB 3.5 100GB Seagate notebook drive. This is just for test purposes at this time. I will upgrade to Vista soon. I keep a copy of my documents, application install files and email on a 60GB internal drive. I wipe my C drive every 6 months or so... I can completely restore my system from an FDISK and Format in less than 1 hour. I have legitimate copies of all MS's operating systems from Windows 95C through Windows XP Pro, SP2

Agreed, but an 'almost right' system is better than he had. It would allow him to go on tweaking the existing to perfection or damnation, while still having a half-way house to fall back on.

Hi Tmagic and Hatrick,

Thanks for getting back to me w/ your thoughts per my last post.
Tmagic, per your post of Yesterday 07:29 PM WOW!--what a honker kick-*** system! ------- especially if you're not a "Gamer", which I am not at all. There isn't a single game on my system.

Thank you in particular for validating my strategy!--when it comes time to try and re-activate at least some of the things I've deleted from startup, and experiment w/ Hardware Acceleration settings other than the "none" its at now, I will run my thoughts/plan of action by you for evaluation and comment before doing anything. For now I'm making no changes of any sort until 3 or 4 days more go by w/ no BSOD or relevant error messages in Event Viewer

I make ghosts either on a bi-weekly basis, or if I've made a significant change in my software configuration ( i.e. like a program addition/deletion/major update ).
I of course would immediately make a ghost also if I made a hardware change of any sort, but haven't made any changes in hardware since adding my Plextor 708A DVD burner over a year ago.

I just got in, its 530PM PST and the system is running fine--no BSOD generation, no error messages in Event Viewer.

I will post again w/ developments before going to bed tonight

Hi Hatrick and Tmagic,

I just downloaded/installed/ran DriverGuide 2.0 ; attached is a .png of its results.

Let me know if this gives you relevant info --the program in its free form won't let me try to update drivers or back them up. I don't care about the backing up feature because I use Driver Genius for that, and as re updating, I've always gone the manufacturers sites and used their specific updating tools.

It is now 1045PM Tue. PST and the system continues to run w/ no BSOD or error messages in Event Viewer.

Will post again tomorrow AM with developments overnight

Wait to hear from you. Best, Peter

Hi Tmagic and Hatrick,

After doing the DriverGuide I got brave, ran Verifier .exe without changing any of its settings and at the reboot prompt got a blue background screen with NOTHING but the following at the very top of the screen:

IO SYSTEM VERIFICATION error in: ATMhelper.sys ( WDM Driver Error 21f )
[ ATMhelper .sys+280at F7B65280]

I rebooted, got the same screen, and had to go to F8 Last Known Good Configuration to get back to my desktop.

Am I right that this isn't a real BSOD because I did something wrong w/ respect to how I ran Verifier.exe ? After getting back to my desktop there was no Event Viewer error message other than a Event 1002 DHCP error some time prior to running Verifier--that message shows up quite infrequently and never at/near a BSOD/spontaneous reboot

Please advise because this makes me worry about whether there still is a driver issue somewhere-----one part of me says its ok, you really don't have a problem, you just ran Verifier incorrectly.........and then theres my worry-wart part that won't go away till I hear from you that I'm right about not having a driver issue.......

Its now a couple of minutes before midnight here 11:50PM Tue. PST --will post developments tomorrow AM

Peter,
Stop fiddling. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Use system restore to put it back a couple of days to when it was O.K. then leave it alone and await results.

Regards.

"Thanks for getting back to me w/ your thoughts per my last post.
Tmagic, per your post of Yesterday 07:29 PM WOW!--what a honker kick-*** system! ------- especially if you're not a "Gamer", which I am not at all. There isn't a single game on my system."

Peter,
I don't consider myself a "gamer" per se. I do have an AGP ATI Radeon 9600XT, with 256MB DDR memory installed on the card. I play Halo: Combat Evolved, and a few poker games, that's all


Peter,
Stop fiddling. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Use system restore to put it back a couple of days to when it was O.K. then leave it alone and await results.

Amen to that Hatrick!

Hi Hatrick and Tmagic,

I wasn't trying to fiddle around, just get info I thought you wanted to see.

Its now 930AM Wed and system has run fine all night w/ mo BSOD or error messages in Event Viewer.

Only issue last night was me when I ran Verifier.

Will advise developments tonight.

Best, Peter

Hi Tmagic and Hatrick,

I'm full of nothing but GOOD NEWS! I am so stoked----I uninstalled Adobe Type Manager after giving some thought as to the contents of that blue screen that showed up when I ran Verifier.exe last night.

It is now 830 PM Wed. PST, the computer has run all day w/ no BSOD or error messages in Event Viewer.

I made a ghost to my D: drive and after rebooting decided I was going to run Verifier.exe again to see what would happen after uninstalling Adobe Type Manager (which came w/ Adobe Photo Deluxe Business Edition) which was something I'd NEVER used. I do use Photo Deluxe a lot though, along w/ Firehand Ember

I am beyond DELIGHTED to be able to tell you that I ran Verifier just like last night, rebooted at the prompt, AND GOT RIGHT BACK TO MY DESKTOP WITH NO WEIRD SCREENS ! YEAH!!!!!! Can you say " HAPPY CAMPER" ?!

Please advise your thoughts re my following intended plan of action based on the above developments.......

My plan is to now make absolutely no more changes to anything unless/until SpySweeper support tells me to uninstall/reinstall the program or do something else. If they leave me hanging, I would do that on my own and not worry about it since I now have the security of an apparently ( based on the successful running of Verifier ) totally clean and current ghost.

If 4-5 days more go by with no trouble, I then plan to one at a time, with at least a couple of days between actions, start enabling the startup group items that I disabled as part of this diagnostic epic which has now been going on for almost 3 weeks. I would make a new ghost after the successful enabling of each item (there are 4 total, one of which is SpySweeper). SpySweeper, per my comments in the preceding paragraph, would be the last thing I'd deal with.

If I make it through that phase and get the SpySweeper issue resolved,
I would then, with of course an up to the moment ghost sitting in D:, start bumping up Hardware Acceleration 1 notch at a time with at least 96 hrs between bumps ( based on past bad event intervals), and make a new ghost after each successful bump.

Finally, after seeing how far I can get with bumping Hardware Acceleration w/o any issues, I'd make still another ghost and keep it as a permanent reference master that I can forever go back to in case of a problem. I also would/will make ghosts before and after every future hardware or major (install,uninstall,major update) software change. ( I've been doing that all along, but its obviously been w/ a flawed system. )

I'm eagerly looking forward to your thoughts, comments ,and suggestions per all of the above!

Last, but far from least ,thank you so much again for sticking w/ me! I wouldn't have gotten to where I am w/o you. BLESS YOU GUYS!!!

Will wait to hear from you and post again tomorrow AM with another status report. Best, Peter

Peter,

You obviously haven't read the on line documentation on Verifier. It doesn't *do* anything except monitor and report. Any *doing* is yours.

As for the strategy, I would not presume to comment. My philosophy is encapsulated in the signature at the foot of my posts. Your strategy is yours, mine is mine and, if it all goes 'belly up', the strategist takes responsibility.

My impression is that you are a compulsive tweaker/ app collector, so future disasters are almost inevitable. If your chosen strategy copes with that, well done. I, on the other hand, adhere pretty firmly to the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' school of thought. The pc, by and large, does what I want it to do, so I jog along with my ancient BIOS and drivers because they work.

Glad we were able to help you.

Take care.

Hi Hatrick,

I read the documentation, but was rather confused by parts of it---went well over my head.

I an not a tweaker----no overclocking or any of that sort of thing for me ever--it scares me. I'm not into anything except keeping the system clean and properly updated so as to avoid the sort of trouble I've been having.

I totally agree w/ you about 'if not broke, don't fix it', but my problem here was that things had been 'broke' for many months w/o my knowing it--it was only when I started running Folding At Home and getting spontaneous reboots, and then BSOD when I turned off "automatic restart", that I realized I had problems---especially since my ghosts were unknowingly contaminated too.

I'm not an app collector other than to have all the protection stuff I can get my mits on because I am terrified of all the bad stuff out there and the creeps trying to get into peoples systems---- the reason I was putting new things into the system was that when I ran across a new anti-spyware utility, it found things that none of the apps I already had in the system had detected. In conjunction w/ that, I kept seeing advice on multiple forums, etc re running more than one protection tool just because they all seemed to find things that others didn't.

I suppose you could consider me a compulsive paranoid in that respect.

I'm far from confident of being over my problems---it'll be several more days before I feel that secure, but its now 1140AM Thurs. PST, and the system ran all night again w/ no BSOD or error messages in Event Viewer.

Please let me know you saw this and I'll update developments again tonight.

Best Peter

Hey Peter,
what are your computer use habits? Downloading music... Going to adult sites? There has to be a reason for all your troubles here. Are you the only one that uses your system. Your system is not part of a network is it?

Hi Tmagic,

No music downloading and no adult sites; I am sole user of the system.

Like I wrote in my last post this morning, my problem here was that things had been 'broke' for many months w/o my knowing it--it was only when I started running Folding At Home and getting spontaneous reboots, and then BSOD when I turned off "automatic restart", that I realized I had problems---especially since my ghosts were unknowingly contaminated too.

Now 215 PM PST Thurs, will be back to computer about 1145 PM tonite, will post developments then. Sytem running fine till now w/ no BSOD or error messages.

Best, Peter