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re: Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000'
Saturday, March 4, 2006 at 2:09 pm
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Zondor
(1 messages posted)
I have wrestled with fatal errors that cause either a restart or a blue screen of
death. Apparently this is a common problem with Windows XP, supposedly the "robust"
version of Windows.
A search of the web shows that this problem is fairly widespread and a real pain
to isolate and fix. It's either your hardware or your drivers according to Microsoft.
Thanks a lot, it's either my hardware or software, that's very helpful. It could
be multiple drivers, each causing a shutdown. It could be RAM memory, it could be
an overheating CPU or hard disk.
So there is no one solution. But here is what I did and it seemed to help.
The problem seems to stem from "unsigned" (un-approved) drivers being used with XP.
Most if not all users migrated their programs from Windows 98, importing drivers
along with it.
1) Set XP so that it will alert you when an unsigned driver is being installed, but
not otherwise. Go to Sytem>>Devices, and FOR EACH device (all 30 or so) update the
driver. You will be surprised that some of the more arcane ones (e.g. Intel bus
or USB drivers) are updated. Otherwise it will just tell you there is no better
driver.
These are the drivers you use 95% of the time so it will resolve 95% of your fatal
events if the drivers were causing them.
2) If the hardware is the source look for overheating and memory defects. You can
check the memory and Hard Disk temperature with freeware programs. HDD Temperature
will monitor your Hard Disk temperature. MemTest by HCI software (again free) will
exhaustively test your RAM integrity. There must be some kind of software that will
exhaustively test your hardware, like the burn-in software they used to test the
computer when new, but I don't know where this is available.
Whether you can test the CPU or the hard disk depends on the particular brand, some
have a temperature diode, some don't.
For my part I did the above and found I had an overheating Hard disk. I also found
that a number of my USB and Intel bus drivers were outdated. In any case this cut
down on the shutdowns to about one per day.
Finally, I just found at Microsoft's web site a tool to find ALL of the unsigned
drivers on your Windows machine. They have a tool for this. The article is: 316434
located at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;316434
GOOD LUCK!
It says:
How to remove unsigned drivers
All the drivers that are included with Windows XP use digital signatures to verify
that they have been tested by the Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL). Many third-party
programs are written for Windows XP must install additional drivers that have not
been tested by WHQL. Therefore, they do not receive a digital signature.
Note Some third-party vendors have tools that they can use to generate a valid digital
signature even if these products were not tested by WHQL. The following procedure
cannot be used to determine whether these drivers are installed.
Windows XP includes the File Signature Verification tool (Sigverif.exe). You can
use this tool to find all files on your computer that are not digitally signed. For
the purposes of Windows XP clean-boot troubleshooting, you have to test only the
files in the %Windir%\System32\Drivers folder.
To use the Sigverif.exe tool, follow these steps: 1. Click Start, click Run, type
sigverif in the Open box, and then click OK.
2. Click Advanced, click Look for other files that are not digitally signed, click
Browse, locate the Windows\System32\Drivers folder, and then click OK two times.
3. Click Start.
After Sigverif.exe is completed, a list of all unsigned drivers that are installed
on your computer appears.
On Saturday, August 24, 2002 at 2:16 am, Shehan wrote:
>I have a question about Top
>reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000:
>
>
>Hi. My new P4 2.2GHZ (512RAM, 64MB GeForce 4 Graphics Card, 80GB 7200RPM HD, with
>a 300Watt Power Supply and running WinXP Pro) randomly restarts when doing usual
>tasks such as playing games or installing software. Sometimes, on one specific game,
>the Blue Screen of Death appears and says something about a memory dump and it tells
>me to restart the computer. I can't get it to respond at all, so I have to restart
>the computer using the reset button. After I restart the computer, Windows tells
>me that it has recovered from a serious problem and asks if i want to send Microsoft
>an error report. This happens often, with or without the restarting problem.
>
>How can I fix this? Should I uninstall Windows XP which the computer came loaded
>with, or is it a hardware problem? My computer is only one day old, and it has these
>problems!!!
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 |  | re: Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000' (Zondor: Sat, Mar 4, 2006, 2:09 pm) |
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