Windows 7 crashes with blue screen, getting more frequent

[shearski]

Hi

I bought a windows 7 packard bell just under 2 years ago and for the past few months whilst booting it would regularly perform the checkdisk function, and every now an then it would crash and I would get a blue screen saying it had a problem and would perform a memory dump.

This seems to be happening more often recently. A colleague mentioned that it could be down to temperature and to check fans, which I have cleaned as were getting a bit dusty. I have recently installed Kaspersky internet security and so removed AVG and Zone alarm to prevent possible conflicts.

I noted that earlier the reasons given when it blue screened were kernal data error 41 or kernal data inpage error.

I googled this and someone suggested I updated drivers and I have updated the NVIDIA display and motherboard drivers as well as Realtek audio. The blue screen appears randomly but this afternooon it is happeneing when i try to run a kaspersky scan or even when trying to run windows update.

Is there anything else I can try (bearing in mind that my skills are limited) or will I have to resort to a clean install?

Thanks
Alec

 

[Tmagic650]

"it would regularly perform the checkdisk function"...
The hard drive is bad. Replace it

 

[techsuitor]

how about performing a last known good configuration?

 

[shearski]

Tmagic - could that account for the crashes and blue screens?

 

[shearski]

techsuitor -"how about performing a last known good configuration? " how would i do that?

 

[shearski]

more info

I was sent a message to try using whocrashed to analyse what caused the crashes, have run that and I get

System Information (local)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

computer name: HOME-PC
windows version: Windows 7 Service Pack 1, 6.1, build: 7601
windows dir: C:\Windows
CPU: GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8300 @ 2.50GHz Intel586, level: 6
4 logical processors, active mask: 15
RAM: 2951991296 total
VM: 2147352576, free: 1953271808



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crash Dump Analysis
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Crash dump directory: C:\Windows\Minidump

Crash dumps are enabled on your computer.


On Sun 11/09/2011 15:42:20 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\091111-37845-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x7CC40)
Bugcheck code: 0x7A (0xFFFFF6FC50057098, 0xFFFFFFFFC000009C, 0x4555B880, 0xFFFFF8A00AE13828)
Error: KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This bug check indicates that the requested page of kernel data from the paging file could not be read into memory.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time.

the other crashes seem to all be caused by the same module

 

[Tmagic650]

Still, if Checkdisk runs at every start up, this points to a dying hard drive, and yes it can cause these BSOD's

 

[techsuitor]

Hmm.. If this is the case, I see that you need to have a new one.

 

[shearski]

thanks - sorry for all the questions- although i am quite computer literate as soon as it gets complicated I am out of my depth.

If it is a hardware problem as you both think and I replace the harddisk, can the data be transferred accross from this harddisk to the new one or is it best to start a fresh?

 

[Tmagic650]

It is always best to start fresh, but you may be able to save data off the old drive set as a second drive, once the new drive was installed and Windows was installed and all the Windows Updates applied

 

[techsuitor]

Yup! you can still recover those data. As Tmagic has said, just make your new drive the master and you can transfer the files from it.