BSOD

Have you run MemTest86 to see if there is a problem with the RAM?

Have you run chkdsk on the hard drive as well?

Hi TomJeson64,

   Thank you for the quick response. In fact, thank you for responding at all. It really didn't seem like anyone would know anything about this problem.

    I haven't run memtest86. Don't know what that is or how to run it. I can't be sure but I think I ran chkdsk and I don't think it came up with anything.

   Can you tell me how to run memtest86?

To run chkdsk, you hit start, hit run, and type chkdsk and hit enter, right?

memtest86 is a RAM (Random access memory) test. It can be run from USB or CD.

Here is the place to download it from (get the free version, you do not need the pro):

https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm

Once you have it on USB or CD, you restart your computer and boot from USB or CD and let the test run.

It needs to run for at least 4 hours (for 2GB or RAM) or more  (if it is over 2GB of RAM) to see if there are problems with RAM. The program will show the errors it found.

Yes, chkdsk is run from the start menu. Run a deep scan to see if it finds anything now.

Thanks TomJeson64,

   I have some blank CDs and as soon as I can figure out their capacity and find out how large the downloaded test is I'll get back to you.

   I have no idea how to do this. Do you download it directly to the CD or download it to hard drive and then put it on a CD?

Hi TomJeson64,

I visited the link you provided and it looks like it's got all the info I need.

Thanks again and I'll let you know how I do.

Hi caweclark:

The BleepingComputer forum also has a dedicated board Windows Crashes, BSOD, and Hangs Help and Support where you can get free assistance analyzing dump files generated by your BSODs.  Read their guidelines Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) Posting Instructions - Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7 & Vista for collecting  .dmp files and system information if you decide to post there.

If you like, you could also run Nirsoft's free utility called BlueScreenView and copy/paste the diagnostic log in your next post as instructed below.  BlueScreenView will interpret and summarize the Bug Check (BC) codes in your recent Windows mini-dump files and might show us the specific driver responsible for your crashes.

1.  Download the .ZIP file for BlueScreenView (BlueScreenView.zip for 32-bit OS; BlueScreenView-x64.zip for 64-bit OS) from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html.  Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the download links shown below.
2. Unzip the downloaded file (no installation required) and double-click BlueScreenView.exe to run.
3. When scan is completed, go to Edit | Select All
4. Go to File | Save Selected Items and save the report as a text file named BSOD.txt
5. Copy the contents of BSOD.txt in your next post.

BlueScreenView isn't as accurate as an analysis of your full dump files with WinDbg (Windows Debugger) tool the experts at BleepingComputer use because BlueScreenView only shows the drivers loaded in the crash stack at the time of your BSOD, but I was able to fix intermittent BSODs on my Vista SP2 computer a few years ago after BlueScreenView pointed to a problem with an out-of-date driver for my NVIDIA graphics card.

WhoCrashed is another good free utility you could try instead of BlueScreenView. Both tools are compatible with Vista SP2.
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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.7.3 * Norton Security v22.14.0.54
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

Hi Great White,

   Bleeping Computer hasn't answered so I guess they got better things to do.

Blue Screen View didn't find anything because the settings didn't allow it to read the mini-dump files so I have to wait until there's another BSOD.

So that's it for now. Thanks once again for all your help.

caweclark

Bleeping Computer hasn't answered so I guess they got better things to do.

Blue Screen View didn't find anything because the settings didn't allow it to read the mini-dump files so I have to wait until there's another BSOD...

Hi caweclark:

I'm not sure which thread in BleepingComputers's Windows Crashes, BSOD, and Hangs Help and Support board belongs to you, but your Vista SP2 OS should automatically create dump files after a BSOD if you are using default settings at the Control Panel | System and Maintenance | System |  Advanced System Settings | Startup and Recovery | Settings | System Failure as shown below (note that Write Debugging Information should be set to write to Kernel Memory Dump).

If you aren't seeing .DMP files created at C:\Windows (full dumps) or C:\Windows\Minidump (mini-dumps) after a BSOD you might find something logged in your Event Viewer.  As a quick check, go to Control Panel | System and Maintenance | Problem Reports and Solutions | View Problem History and see if there are any entries under Windows.  From my last BSOD in June 2017 (Problem Event Name:  BlueScreen):

Do you recall seeing the typical "blue screen" and error message associated a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)?  If your screen simply turns black on occasion it's possible that you have an issue caused by out-of-date graphics drivers or some other hardware-related problem rather than a BSOD.  If you want to pursue this, run a quick diagnostic with Piriform's free Speccy (https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy), go to File | Publish Snapshot and then copy and paste the URL this generates (e.g., http: // speccy.piriform.com/results/xxx... ) in your next post as instructed in the support article Publishing a Speccy Profile to the Web so we can see a snapshot of your system.  If you don't want to install Speccy on your hard drive you can also save the portable version of Speccy from their builds page at https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy/builds onto a USB thumb drive and unzip and run the executable there.  I'm not an expert at reading system diagnostics but I might be able to find something that's out of order.

I published a Speccy snapshot of my own Vista SP2 computer at http://speccy.piriform.com/results/zghFKJFHYgAnFECgKXl2BfV today if you'd like to see a sample diagnostic.

This won't be relevant if your BSODs occur after a crash of your operating system, but just note that my Vista SP2 machine also has a hidden folder at C:\Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Local\CrashDumps where some third-party programs (e.g., iTunes.exe, mbam.exe, etc.) save their own dump files after an application crash .

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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.7.4 * Speccy Portable v1.31.732

HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

Hi Great White,

   Yes, it was a blue screen, not black.

The title of my post in Bleeping is BSOD started by Borlo. The results are in there as links.

  There weren't any mini dumps in C:\Windows\minidumps. Search for full dumps yielded no results.

   I set it to write to Kernel. It was set to mini dump per instructions in speccy.

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/yLuWHwnTIufkRA5rlzSLewR

That's the snapshot of the system.

Well, I hope I answered everything.

caweclark

...  There weren't any mini dumps in C:\Windows\minidumps. Search for full dumps yielded no results.   I set it to write to Kernel. It was set to mini dump per instructions in speccy.

Hi caweclark:

You probably won't learn the root cause of your BSODs until one of the experts in BleepingComputer is able to analyze a full dump file with WinDbg, but in the mean time here's a few comments about your Speccy snapshot at http://speccy.piriform.com/results/XudMRXAwhp4yGAuFETsfkVG and system stability.  Just food for thought since I'm not a certified MSCE tech.

There's nothing I can see in your snapshot that suggests an impending hardware failure but you seem to have your 64-bit Vista SP2 running on a desktop with an older BIOS (last updated 17-Sep-2010) and some relatively high-end hardware specs for a machine that age.   For now I'll assume you've upgraded some of the hardware components in this machine.

Search for "hard drives" in your Speccy profile.  Speccy reports you have a 1 TB Seagate SATA HDD but your main C: drive (Partition 0) plus your D:\ drive (Partition 1 - which I'm guessing is a HP Recovery drive) only account for ~ 600 GB.  The S.M.A.R.T. attributes for your HD all have values of "0" or "0000000000" (even though status is Good), which also seems odd.   I don't know if this is a glitch with Speccy for your particular make/model of HDD (you could ask in their forum at https://forum.piriform.com/forum/22-speccy-discussion/) or a possible issue with your BIOS settings, but I would check at Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management | Storage | Disk Management and see if Windows recognizes the entire 1 TB drive. If something looks odd you might want to run Seagate's own SeaTools for Windows utility for testing your hard drive - see the Lifewire tutorial <here>.  Is there any chance you tried cloning an old hard drive using imaging software like Macrium Reflect or Acronis True Image and swapped in a new 1 TB HDD that was not partitioned correctly?

Search for "graphics" in your Speccy profile.  You have driver version 9.18.13.4195 (a.k.a. v341.95) for your NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 graphics card but a manual search for the latest 64-bit Vista SP2 drivers at https://www.geforce.com/Drivers shows that newer v342.01 drivers (rel. 14-Dec-2016) are available.  You should also have an NVIDIA Control Panel on your computer (try Control Panel | Hardware and Sound | NVIDIA Control Panel | Help | Updates) where you can also check for an available update for your graphics drivers.

Search for "bitdefender virus shield".  You have several Bitdefender services loading at boot-up (and then stopping) in your Windows services.  You have a scheduled task running on your machine named BDAntiCryptoWallTask so I don't know if you have the Bitdefender Anti-Ransomware Tool or some other Bitdefender software running in real-time protection mode, but if you used a Bitdefender antivirus in the past you might want to run the manufacturer's removal tool (BleepingComputer has a removal tool for older versions of Bitdefender security software <here>) to remove any orphaned Bitdefender files and registry entries that might be conflicting with your current Avast AV.

Search for "smartdefrag_startup".  You have a high number of scheduled tasks running in the background that probably aren't necessary (e.g., Google Update, HP Health Check, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc.) and eating up system resources - especially auto-updaters for old, unsupported programs that are no longer being updated.  You might want to reconfigure some of your software to disable some of these automated tasks and/or find replacements that are still supported for Vista SP2 (the discussion at Adobe Acrobat Reader for Vista might be of interest).  I'd also suggest disabling Adobe Flash in your Firefox browser and browse for a week or so to see if you even need it - I uninstalled the Flash Player plugin in my Firefox browser in Feb 2015 and haven't missed it since.

Search for "current TCP connections". Again, you seem to have quite a few open connections associated with your scheduled tasks.  According to Speccy you have outdated TeamViewer 11 remote access software installed on your system, and if you don't need it I'd uninstall it (or at least update to TeamViewer 13 and prevent it from loading at boot-up) to improve system security.

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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.7.4 * Speccy Portable v1.31.732

HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS