Hi, I have been getting a large number of BSoD errors lately on my system. The error is always a STOP 0x00000050 error (PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA). The errors seem to occur at random, and I can't seem to find anything in particular that sets it off.

From what I could research from this site and other sites, the error is commonly caused by either bad memory, a bad pagefile, or a virus/spyware. I've checked for the virus and couldn't find any evidence of it. I am currently not using a pagefile (disable due to me having 6 GB of RAM available), and I have run several passes on memtest with no errors.

What troubles me is that the only changes to my system that could have possibly triggered these errors would have been either windows updates, or an update with AVG. Other than that, nothing was updated recently prior to the start of these BSoD errors.

I've tried pretty much every test posted on these boards, but I found nothing.

I have tried reading my minidump files dumpchk, but I do not understand them. I am sure that the problem can be found in there, but I don't know how to read the data.

If someone could give me some quick pointers on how to read the data, it would be greatly appreciated. I want to try to find the problem before I try randomly uninstalling/updating drivers and software.

All your errors are 0x00000050: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

Requested data was not in memory. An invalid system memory address was referenced. Defective memory (including main memory, L2 RAM cache, video RAM) or incompatible software (including remote control and antivirus software) might cause this Stop message, as may other hardware problems (e.g., incorrect SCSI termination or a flawed PCI card).

As you can tell the definition for this error is quite broad. For clarification purposes, the only two things you can think of that has changed are updates to Windows and AVG, correct?

Second, were you getting any BSODs prior to these updates?

We have seen a lot of issues here concerning AVG. Our recommendation to many is to not just disable it but completely uninstall it and to do so thoroughly one must use AVG's removal tool which you can access from their website.

I am not saying AVG is your cause but we have found it to be the case for many people. If you decide to at least try this step let us know if you gain stability (or not).

I got one back in December, and one in January, but recently, I've had 6 since Feb 27. I'm not sure if they were caused by the same thing, but they've definitely been more frequent lately.

I can try reinstalling AVG, but it is my only antivirus program, so I do need to use it.

Are there any other free antivirus programs out there that are any good? If so I can try using one of those for the time being to see if I gain any stability

Yes there two very good free ones: Avast 4.8 and Avira.

Again, make sure AVG is completely uninstalled before installing another antivirus. You must use AVG's removal tool to remove any remnants.

I didnt get a chance to try those other AV programs yet, but I've been noticing a pattern in the BSoD errors lately. They seem to occur overnight while I leave the computer on. Kinda like a scheduled task is causing the error.

The problem is that I don't have any scheduled tasks set to go off overnight. AVG scans every day, but it doesn't start till 8:00am, and the scan always completes successfully. Going by the logs, the errors appears to happen between 10:00pm and 1:00am.

The blue screen also always indicates the file win32k.sys as the source of the problem. Not sure if this helps shed any light on the issue though.

I'll still try switching AV programs when I get the chance. Hopefully it will put a stop to these errors.

Well it took me a while to thoroughly test the system, but it looks like I was able to fix the problem *knocks on wood*

Looks like you were right. I tried removing AVG and installing Avira instead. I haven't had a BSoD since the install, so it looks like it's all good now.

I am still curious how AVG could cause blue screens to happen on my system.

In any case, thanks a lot for your help.

Thanks for getting back to us with the resolve. AVG used to be a really top-notch product but with the release of their version 8 it became bloated. I refer to what kimsland once wrote not too long ago in that AVG have a number of scanners and they have a tendency to "compete" for the same driver thius resulting in internal conflicts.

Good choice with Avira.

Well looks like I spoke too soon. I got two more blue screens yesterday. One after I finished burning a DVD, and another overnight.

At this point I've tried removing and reinstalling every driver on my system, my codecs, and my most common software. I ran several passes of memtest with no errors. Ive also run chkdsk on my OS partition. It says that there are errors on the drive, but every time I try to run it with the /f switch from another OS, it comes up empty. I'm not sure if this could be an issue contributing to the blue screens.

The only things I have left to try at the moment are removing some of the memory from my system, and restoring my entire OS from an image I made a while ago. If there are any other ideas, they would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, go to your harddrive manufacturer's website and download their free diagnostics utility. Run the tests they provide. Sometimes while testing these utilites can repair bad sectors, etc. Sometimes they can't.

I've tried running every test under the sun, but I still can't seem to find any problems.

However, the frequency of the errors have also dropped significantly, which also made diagnosing the problem even more challenging. They seem to happen less than once a week now, which is not so bad. I would still like to try to find what's causing them, but at the frequency that they are occurring, I probably wont spend too much time on it.

Thanks for the suggestion on the antivirus program. The frequency of the errors dropped significantly after this change, so it helps a lot.

If I find anything else, I will post it here.

When you uninstalled AVG did you use their removal tool after normal uninstall?

I couldn't find any specific tool to remove the AVG program. I found virus removal tools on their website, but nothing for the program itself. I didn't use any of the virus removal programs.

I used the AVG install file itself to uninstall the program, not Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel. The install file has an option to remove the program from the computer.

Let me see if I can help a bit...
To uninstall your AVG Antivirus, do as you have done,
Then run the removal tool
Here is the 32Bit version (most users): http://www.avg.com/filedir/util/avg_...avgremover.exe
Here is the 64Bit version: http://www.avg.com/filedir/util/avg_...removerx64.exe

Restart
Don't leave yourself defenseless though... Install another package asap.

Thanks a lot. I've run the program and it looks like it removed the remaining traces of the program. We'll see if this works. This will take some time though, as the frequency of the errors have already been significantly reduced to on average, less than once per week. So it may take a while for me to get back to you on the results.

Thanks again guys.

no such luck I'm afraid. I got another one last night. The thing is, this time the computer was just sitting idle.

Something I noticed when reading the dump files though is that there often seems to be many instances of kmixer.sys running. I've looked up kmixer.sys errors on google, but I wasn't able to find anything that really came close to what I am currently dealing with. Are there any thoughts on this?

kmixer.sys is part of your Windows OS and is a kernel mode audio mixer. You might want to try updating your audio drivers.

I already tried that. I uninstalled the old drivers, even used Driver Cleaner to remove all old traces of the driver, the reinstalled the latest drivers for the sound card. In fact, I did the same with all of my drivers, and not just the sound card drivers.