My girlfriend has been getting a BSOD when starting up her PC for 2 days. She says she gets it at the welcome screen, before entering her password. We thought it was a hardware issue, but she can get on safe mode and debug mode (Debug mode is how she's talking to me right now, through windows live messenger)

I've attatched the Dmp files from each time she's gotten the bsod in the past 2 days, and hoped someone here could make some sense of them. If it helps (I dunno if it's related or not) she got an error about Adobe reader right before the BSOD first happened, then it happened on each subsequent startup.

Thank you.

Hi there,

Have read your dumps and they all come back with the same error of Bug Check 0xD1: DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL and citing Unknown_Image.

I would suggest a few things to start with.

1. Uninstall the display adapter/graphics in safemode and reboot into normal mode to see if this solves your problem. If so, then you will need to reinstall the most recent driver from the manufacturers website once in normal mode and you can connect to the internet.

2. This can also be due to RAM, try the first step however and let us know how you get on

Could you walk me through how to do that? I'm not very tech savvy and like I said it's not my PC, it's my girlfriend's and she's 500 miles away from me at the moment. If you think it would help I'll have her make an account here so she can post as well. She knows how to boot into safe mode and everything, just not how to uninstall display adapter/graphics. Sorry if I'm being annoying.

No thats entirely fine, some people find it offensive if you assume they want instructions. Have had it a few times before

Get her to boot into safemode. Once there:

1. Start > Right Click on 'My Computer' > Manage > Device Manager > Expand display adapters by double clicking on it or clicking the + > Right click on the adapter shown > Select 'uninstall'

Reboot and see if you can get into normal mode. It will then pop up with a box saying it found the hardware again and wants to install it. Thats when you can go through reinstalling it, which I can talk you through

She said she'll try that later. She's been messing with the computer since this morning (Your thingy says you're in new zealand, so I'll just say it's 11 PM here so you can imagine how worn out she is)

But once she does try it out, I'll let you know how it works. We both have PS3s so we can talk on there when she's in safe mode in case it doesn't work and she can't get back online through debug.

Thank you for your help.

Yes, its 2:46pm on Friday for me. So I'm currently at work, doing the usual Friday workload

No problem, let me know how it goes

OK, she went ahead and tried what you said. Now she says everything looks like crap and she keeps getting kicked off of windows live messenger. What should she do now?

Edit: And by what to do now, I mean how to install new drivers. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

It will look like crap because you dont have your adapter installed

To install the new drivers, she will need to locate the brand of her computer on the internet, or the brand of her graphics card if she has one installed. Generally, go with the brand of your machine.

It should then have a setup.exe file you can run and solve you having to manually install it.

If you are unsure, then I will need her computer brand/model (if it is a brand machine). Or her graphics card if custom

Her PC model is an emachines T3830, the video card is: Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV graphics controller

Problem is, when she installed the driver for that graphics controller, which is "Download the Intel Extreme Graphics Driver" at this site: www(.)intel(.)com/support/graphics/intel845g/sb/cs-009072.htm , and restarted she got the BSOD again. After she uninstalled the driver earlier she could get on her PC the normal way (Granted it looked like crap) but now she gets BSOD again. She's currently on debug mode again.

(Sorry for the (.) stuff but I can't post links yet.)

Okay well that's just pushed further towards the graphics driver causing the issues.

Unless you can find another driver for the graphics controller, then you could contact Intel and see if there has been any known issues/bugs with the driver.

But I suspect its the way the driver is interacting with your hardware, which basically means that your controller is faulty.

Is there anyway you can test it with an actual graphics card you can slot into the motherboard? This would bypass the potential graphics controller fault

No, she doesn't have access to any video cards nor does she have the money to get one. One thing: The PC is like 10 years old so it might just be starting to show it's age. She's thinking of buying http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9170835&type=product&id=1218043607320 since she already has a monitor. I know it's not the best PC around but it's the cheapest and that's all we can afford.

I'll look for other drivers for the display and let you know if we find anything

At the end of the day, its up to you what type of computer you buy because your paying for it! Haha.

If its sufficient for what you need, then you don't need anything fancy

That's refreshing. Normally if I mention any computer that can't run 26 copies of Crysis on all high settings then I get bombarded by the PC elitist squad who proceed to chew me out about how I'm not cool like them and don't buy (buy; read: Get mommy to buy) the most top of the line PCs used by NASA.

According to my girlfriend, the only things she needs in a PC is browsing the internet and talking to me. For gaming and whatnot she just likes oldschool point and click adventures so that PC should be just fine.

Thanks for your help, I'll come back and post again if there are any further developments on what's going on.

Haha, sorry I'm not an elite gamer. Cant afford with all the living expenses I have to pay. I'm a computer technician so I get a lot of average computer users that I need to spec up machines for.

I hardly ever have a gamer wander into my store, they all do it themselves.

The machine should be fine for your budget/uses

After allowing Microsoft to do a full deep scan, it found a trojan DOS : Sinowal.K while scanning the drivers. After removing it and restarting, she was finally able to boot into normal mode. Everything seems to be working fine, though she's very paranoid now because she does her banking online and Sinowal.K is a data stealing trojan (In the morning she'll be calling her bank and telling them not to allow any purchases that she doesn't confirm herself)

I know some forums close topics like this once they are resolved, but I request it's left open for now, just in case the problem isn't fully solved so I don't have to make a new topic. Thank you.

Good news!

Well not so much, but at least it is fixed