Vista 32bit BSOD, help with minidump

Yes, absolutely that can be the cause (good move on downloading and running the Seagate utility). A failing harddrive is something you need to rectify A.S.A.P. I strongly suggest you backup everything that is important, i.e., school work, job related, important documents, photos, song lists,saved games, etc., as soon as you can. Burn to CDs and/or transfer to flash drives and external harddrives. Information recovery from failed HDs is expensive Then get a new harddrive.

There are better brands out there such as Seagate and Western Digital. Maxtor (which never had the best reputation) was bought by Seagate a couple of years ago and is their lower end offering. But their offerings with the Seagate name have the longest warrenty in the business. I run two Seagate SATA's in my current systems. I have also used WD. Both have worked well.

By the way, I use the Seagate utility from time to time as a precaution maintenance. It is great for a little peace of mind.

Keep us up-to-date.

Cheers once again...

Route44 and Co.

Thanks again for the relpy - very fast and very helpful indeed. In testing my hard drive with the seagate utility (note it is a Maxtor HD, but seagate util. work with the drive i own) - the SMART scan failed as i noted above. To double check this, i looked through my BIOS and noticed that i do have a SMART check feature avalable to me. I set this to 'enabled' and the computer booted without any SMART checking errors - so this either tellls me the HD is 'okay' but might need to be replaced or that the HD is dead and i should rely on the software utility i used. In either case i have now backed up my entire HD, all 4 partitions and both OS installed.

To further include more information, i am currently in the process of updating Vista on my one partition and disabled my on board sound, and am currently updating all drivers i can think of to newer vista versions where available.

I am having problems it seems with my Creative Labs SE video card. I downloaded the drivers from the creative site, but still vista will not recognize the card fully - is this card known to be problamatic with Vista? Any ideas?

As you mentioned, i will keep you folks updated as i update the machine and try new things, if i get another dump, i would like to post it here in case i recieve a different error message since changing drivers etc...

Thanks once again for your help

Im back... ugh

Im back again, and i got another crash. This occured just after i loaded up Ventrillo, a VoIP software for gamers. Im assuming then this would probably occure due to sound driver problems.... would i be right in assuming this? could this be the cause....

Here is the new minidump

Is there a way to test if this is the sound drivers acting stupid? Obviously when i load vent - the sound drivers are used when people speak and/or i attempt to speak...

So any ideas? Besides throwing the entire computer out the window...which is at the top of what i want to do with it right now!! Ugh! At least Windows XP works for now...

Thanks again

Edit - i also noticed Vista was telling me that i might need a driver for my intel dual core CPU. I went to the site and was downloaded the correct file, but the install told me it was not meant for my system... so that didnt work... is it true vista needs a driver for my dual core?!?!?!

The error again is 0x124 WHEA_ERROR_RECORD

Here is what Microsoft has pertaining to this error:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa939072.aspx

Since it is an error pertaining to hardware and that Seagate's utility does say impending harddrive failure, I think you should go back and do a full harddrive diagnostics.

* Also, I did have to download a driver from AMD inorder for XP to run with my dual core.

ty

Thanks again for the reply so fast. I would like to do a full diagnostic check on my hard drive - what would you recommend me do... i have never done one of these tests before. What would you recommend i use? There must be some software out there that does this sort of thing? Something i burn to CD and boot from perhaps? Once again, ive never done this before so please bear with me as im rather slow when it comes to this... ive done pretty much everything else - time to learn something new!

Hope you can give me some pointers as to where to start...

thank you

EDIT -

I am currently running a Hard drive diagnostic test on my hard drive. I download an ISO from maxtor and am currently running the full test. Interestingly - the SMART test passed when i ran the 90 second quick hard drive scan/test.

Also, interestingly, after installing new vista drivers for my sound card (they were edited drivers, not the default creative drivers - i found these after an extensive google search), AND removing the card and placing it in an alternate slot, i have YET to recieve any BSOD errors. Before i couldnt get through an entire MP3 playing through napster and i could NEVER get ventrillo to load (log into a lobby) without it crashing with a BSOD ...

So all in all, touch wood, i think the change of slots and the edited sound card drivers may have saved my vista install - i will keep you posted on the Hard drive diagnostic test when it finishes... thanks for all the support -

Great! this 0x124 error has people having to try all kinds of things. I hope the updates work. When utilizing your harddrive utility there is the quick test and the full harddrive test. If IRC (and I could be wrong) the S.M.A.R.T. test is shorter.

Perhaps you can help out a fellow TechSupport-er. jiannis has listed this error in the title of his post (a few below you). Tell him what you have done; it may help him.

Just wanted to keep you updated. Not sure exactly the cause for my fix - but changing the PCI slot for the sound card and modified vista drivers for the card, i have now run Vista BSOD free for almost 12 hrs straight. this includes playing games, music, videos all without a single hiccup. So thanks for all the input and help with my problem... and this thread might help others with the same error sort their problem out...

FYI - the sound card i have is the audigy SE... and the modfied drivers can be found here:
http://hosted.filefront.com/braziliantech/
This link also has other creaive labs drivers that have known compatibility with vista... the guy used the original drivers but edited them to run flawlessly in Vista - just shows how damn lazy creative are with their drivers!