Need Help With BSOD in Windows 7 x64

I've been getting BSODs recetly seemingly at random. I need a little help because I have no idea what causing it.

I really don't have much experience with this, so it would be helpful to know what is needed in order to diagnose this. There are quite a few error entries in my System Events log from today, and really going back a long time. I have attached that.

I updated all my drivers, including chipset, video, and bios but that does npt seems to have an effect.

Any help would be appreciated.

n8

 

Use WhoCrashed home edition; it will pinpoint the offending drivers.

Panagiotis

 

Thanks for that suggestion. The only thing I don't like about that program is that it cannot be altered to look at other dump directories, and I was configured to do complete memory dumps at c:\windows. So now I'm just waiting for another crash. Yeah!! Fun stuff.

I'm in the process of testing my hardware with BurnIn Professional. So far I've tested my RAM, CPU, HDD, and Video RAM and everything has come back good.

 

Hi n8chavez, after a brief look at your log, I initially think it may have something to do with the PzWDM.sys driver, which looking at some more seems to be something to do with your cd/dvd drive.
One item to note in the log is: PzWDM.sys has been blocked from loading due to incompatibility with this system. Please contact your software vendor for a compatible version of the driver.

You may also find this utility slightly better than the previously mentioned one:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html
I have found this one useful when needed.
Hope this helps.

 

I believe I have dealt with the PzWDM.sys issue. It is a driver used in a disc burning application called ONES from Prassi. I deleted the driver and every registry instance of it. Then I had to delete the upperfilters and lowerfilter in order to get my drives to display properly. I believe that's taken care of.

 

Now I'm really mad. I reinstalled Windows 7 and got my entire system back up from scratch and I got another BSOD, the same as before. My thinking is that there is a bad driver somewhere, as opposed to faulty RAM. That could be Humyo, BCWipe, Sandboxie, LnS, or tyhe Lightscribe service.

Any idea?

 

can you upload that minidump file? Rename the dmp extension to txt

 

Thanks very much. I have attached the dump file. I would appreciate any and all help you or anyone else can give me on this, it's been bugging the crap out of me.

 

Recognise the .exe?

 

Pesky BSODs.

Living through many of these, especially in win9x days, there is a standard protocol that really works, but takes time. It is not my protocol really, just a logical conclusion of how you go about it.

Since you are reinstalling and have nothing to lose, strip it down to the basics.

1. remove/unplug everything but floppy or cd drive (or usb if you like) and use some tools such as memtest86 or equivilent. Make sure that ram is good before you assume anything.

2. run your hdd vendors utility. Not only for verification that there are no physical problems, but also that many of the tools today will correct problems. For example, I had a dvd drive I thought was bad, but it turned out my OS drive had some wierd problem nothing else could detect or fix except the WD Lifeguard tool. I did a complete scan (2+ hrs) and at the end it said it fixed some error. After that, all is well again.

3. Try to get some stress testers that run from dos/liveCD. Eliminate the OS and as much hardware as possible. Sometimes you can turn the cache off (for the cpu) in the bios and then if you find stability, the cpu is borked. I have seen that happen more than once. It is rare though.

4. If you are clear of the baseline hardware, then plug one hdd in and install. Pull cards or disable in bios for: sound, nic, lpt, com, usb, etc etc. Basically get the OS on with the minimal hardware possible. Stress test. You need to find what causes the issue (that is, what do you do when it happens) and recreate it.

5. One by one, add in different components. Test without drivers if possible. Add drivers next.

6. Once you have determined that all hardware and drivers are playing nice together, then you move on to software.

** sometimes graphical benchmark tools such as 3dmark, that utilize audio and video amonst other things will show you errors as well as burnin or stress testers **

7. common things I have found that cause issues are bloated software suites, such as Nero. Firewalls, AV and in general security apps, things that install .sys files.

8. eventually you determine if it is hardware/drivers or not. Hopefully not, because then it is a process of elimination with the software.

Just my 2 cents.

Sul.

 

Yes I do. SyncBack is a freeware file backup program that I use to make sure that I have the most recent versions of my files stored on an external drive.

Sully - I did as you suggested already. I used Ultimate Boot CD v5 to test my hardware outside of Windows on Saturday. It took a long time, in fact about 13 hours, and all the tests I ran came back clean. Of course, maybe they were wrong.

 

it caused the latest bsod; not sure why maybe while transferring some archive type file the AV scanned it to death causing some exception or dodgy cable etc. etc.

 

Really? How do you know? I ask because I don't see how that can interfere with anything, because I don't run any malware scanners and that doesn't use any services (other than VSS).

 

n8, how do the voltages look? Can you check them in the BIOS or do the burnin checks reveal those already? What happens if you just do a bare bones re-install of Win, essential drivers only, and without any added software?

 

I can say without a doubt now that it was not SyncBack. I uninstalled it and installed SyncToy and set everything up to use that instead. I was transferring data via USB to my external drive when I got another BSOD using SyncToy.

Could this have anything to do with encrypting the swap with BCWipe?

 

Yes, alongside Wat's train of thought - this a custom box ... one in which BIOS values can be adjusted?

 

It doesn't look like the voltages are anything out of the ordinary, at least what I can remember from the hardware tests. But, my bios doesn't allow me to alter that anyway. However, just to be on the safe side I reverted in back to factory defaults because I don't need any changes made to it. No, this is not custom box. It's HP stock. Actually, that's not true. I added a parallel port because I needed it fore a CMOS application that requires a hardware dongle. My system specs are below:

 

One more Nate - your Win7 an upgrade or supplied solely for this box?

 

It is an upgrade. The system came with Vista but offered a free upgrade to 7.

 

Good! With these few facts out in the open, they'll hopefully be enough for one of our forums attentive thinkers.

 

It seems to me that it occurs every time I try to sync data to my external drive. I'm not sure if is true or not. I've used both SyncToy and SyncBack and had BSODs. Maybe it could be the USB port, but transferring the data manually from system to external drive wotrked perfectly, so that's not it.

Both of those programs make use of VSS, so maybe that is the issue. However, Drive Snapshot does also and I get no problems there. I need to take a step back and think.

 

Seems to be something common with the Sync* apps. Are they by the same developer? Do you get any BSOD's if you remove both of those and don't use either?

 

I though maybe that was the case, but I just ran SnycToy and didn't have any issues this time. I thought that maybe it could be trying to read the same file that Humyo (the online backup service) is, at that same time, so I ran both and again had no issue. This is exactly what I was doing before the 2nd BSOD. So I have no clue.

 

Do you recognize the program "hrfscore.exe"? It was the one responsible for your new BSOD.

Panagiotis