fanio.sys failed to load -- system automatically restarts itself

Hey,

I am new on here, so I apologize if I don't include information that is needed right away.

However, I have a dell studio xps 16 and the thing keeps randomly restarting on me. I checked the event log and every time it lists a "critical" event (The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.), the previous event is "fanio.sys failed to load."

I am thinking that for some reason, the failure of fanio.sys to start is causing my computer to crash and restart. Why is this happening?

Also, another interesting point is that nothing is being listed under Blue Screen Viewer -- only the event logger.

I have also had trouble with USB.sys crashing my system and believe that occurs whenever I have something plugged into my computer through usb and later unplug it -- the computer will crash at some random point after unplugging the usb.

Below is the bluescreenview information for when the system randomly restarts due to the usb.sys:

032212-59420-01.dmp 3/22/2012 10:15:16 AM BUGCODE_USB_DRIVER 0x000000fe 00000000`00000005 fffffa80`096eb1a0 00000000`80863b3c fffffa80`0a40cc48 USBPORT.SYS USBPORT.SYS+2df7e x64 ntoskrnl.exe+7cd40 C:\Windows\Minidump\032212-59420-01.dmp 8 15 7601 329,784


Please let me know if I can provide more information.

I would really appreciate any help on this issue because I am a grad student and my computer keeps randomly restarting while I am working on important papers :/ Thanks!!
 
Fanio.sys is a Dell precision fan controller driver. Do you have any yellow exclamation points in the device manager?
 
No, no yellow flags in the device manager. Also, no dump files are being created when the computer restarts with the fanio.sys error. The last dump file I have was from March due to the USB.sys crash. Any ideas?
 
Back