Another BSOD thread

[topitoff]

Hey all, I have been to the sticky and have done everything in it. It seemed to work a little bit, but it could have been my imagination.

Anyway, the problems started a while back when my friend had bought a faulty batch of ram and I went to test it in my system. Ever since then, even with my original RAM, new RAM, old RAM, secondary computer's RAM, I get BSOD's. I never got any before except in extreme situations.

Everything seems to run fine until I start up firefox (could just be coincidence or my imagination), but I doubt that's the problem aside from helping to boost the RAM usage.

I'm pretty much at my wit's end, I have no clue what is causing the problem.

Any insight into what's causing the problem would be of infinite use,
Topitoff

 

[Blind Dragon]

Cisco VPN 3.51 causes the vsdatant.sys blue screen error in some cases -> vsdatant.sys is a part of ZoneAlarm related software.

It could be other things as well as I haven't finished looking through the dumps but this is the first that jumped out.

There is a software patch if you have Cisco VPN 3.51 -> let me know


***Here is what I would recommend you try***

In order to perform a clean uninstall of ZoneAlarm, please follow the steps below:

IMPORTANT - If you have a Cisco VPN client installed, you must first uninstall the VPN client, then follow the instructions below, and reinstall the Cisco VPN client again afterwards. This procedure will remove all traces of the TrueVector service, which was incorporated by Cisco into their VPN software.

* If you wish to keep your settings, create a Backup from Overview - > Preferences before starting, and then Restore afterwards (available in ZoneAlarm Premium products only).
* Click on Start -> Programs -> Zone Labs
* RIGHT-click on Uninstall Zone Labs Security, then select Properties
* Under Target you will see the following line (the actual drive may be different on your system):

"C:\Program Files\Zone Labs\ZoneAlarm\zauninstexe"

* Change it to:

"C:\Program Files\Zone Labs\ZoneAlarm\zauninst.exe" /clean (add a space and then the /clean)

* Click OK to save the new command line.
* Click on Start -> Programs -> Zone Labs -> Uninstall Zone Labs Security
* Click OK to run the uninstaller, and OK any security alerts that pop up.
* say "Yes when being prompted for the removal of all files and allow TrueVector to shut down.
* Reboot
* After rebooting, check for the following folders, and delete them if you find them:

"Internet Logs"

"Zone Labs" (under your Program Files folder)

"Zonelabs" (under your Windows System32 folder)

* Empty your recycle bin
* Reboot
* install the latest version if you are reinstalling

 

[topitoff]

Thank you very much, Blind Dragon.

I don't have Cisco VPN, but are there any other programs that use the TrueVector Service? (first two I can think of are Hamachi, a VPN client, and Kaspersky, an Anti-virus)

I am about to reboot after the uninstall, here's to hoping I won't get anymore BSOD's (lately, just leaving it on at night causes it to BSOD out of service).

Thanks again and I'll post any results asap,

Topitoff


PS. I don't know why this would have started to intrfere, I had ZoneAlarm dormant on my system for a long time before any BSOD's, do you know?

PPS. Since I took the steps you mentioned, it seems like my computer is slower to load my account, it takes longer to load explorer.exe. I am not sure why, but the 2 gigs of Ram just don't feel like 2 gigs, it feels like Im still performing at 1gig. Do you know if anything could cause such a thing? Also, I was looking in dxdiag to make sure that I was indeed using 2gigs and I noticed my pagefile was set to 4.8gigs, so I wen't to change it in my computer properties but in the pagefile dialog it is set to 3072mb. Any reason why there are two different values?