BSOD on Iinspiron 1420 after windows update

Hi, I recently did a windows update. One of the update was Nvidea Graphics card driver update which was optional. But I went ahead and installed that too. But while I was installing that my display went mad and the computer was shut down after a blue screen that was blinked for some time. Then it came to boot screen with many options. If I select "start windows normally" it would try to boot and suddenly it will again show a blue screen of death (BSOD) for a second and go back to booting again. No matter what mode of start up I choose the process repeated for some time in loop. Then I turned the machine off for some time and later when switched it on it booted without any problem. I did a system restore to the point before the previous windows update. However, from then on this BSOD is happening on and off at random intervals. In the past 2 weeks it has happened at least 10 times for me. Whenever it happens the machine goes into a loop of boot nothing of which will succeed. The only solution would be to shut down the machine completely for some time and then turn it on after few seconds. Then the machine would start up normally.

I saw this particular thread which talked about Intel Matrix Storage Driver. I couldnt understand much. I downloaded that driver and tried to install it. It unzips the file into dell>drivers directory and just opens the folder for me. I dont know if it actually does the installation in that process.

I have done a Micro soft Vista premium 32-bit clean installation on my laptop 2 months back after getting my machine. Today I called up dell customer care and the rep, after trying out many trouble shooting techniques finally took control of my machine and tried updating some drivers etc. but nothing seemed to work. While talking to him also this problem occurred a couple of times. He finally gave up on it and told me you have to bring it back to factory settings.. Well, that will amount to atleast 2 days work for me as I have various softwares installed and set up on my machine. I dont want to go back to that factory setting with all those bloatwares installed. Removing them was the reason I did a clean install in the first place.

Now this BSOD is happenning on and off... but whenever I turn off the machine and start it after some time the problem is gone. But solution is still not there................... Any suggestions would be highly appreciated..

 

A few things.

1. Did you uninstall the update that caused the problem?
2. Do you know which update caused the problem?
3. I also had a problem that one of the updates caused me to BSOD repeatedly. I have all my important data backed up, so I did a fresh Vista install and then installed updates 3 at a time until my computer would BSOD like yours. A that point I inserted my Vista DVD, booted from DVD and selected "repair". This reverted my computer back to before the updates. I then installed the updates 1 by 1 until figuring out which update caused the problem.

Note: that method only works if system restore is on.

 

My system restore was on and I did restore it to the time before the update. the machine booted normally after that. But do I still have to uninstall the upadate? I thought once the system is restored to the time before the update, whatever got updated would not stay there any longer... correct me if I am wrong.. the method u are suggesting seem to be tedious process of figuring out exactly which update caused the problem.

 

Yes, it was fairly tedious, but it was the only way I could get to the point where my computer would stop BSOD all the time.

 

I believe that if you managed to restore the system to the point before the updates were applied, it's as if they never were applied, so you're fine (until you try to install some further updates, that is!).

 

My M1330 went tits up as well after the update.

Since Vista is just a novelty, I'm just goign to re-install Vista (I didn;t have system restore on to save space). Besides I dont have anythign on the vista partition.

It still dual boots to the XP just fine....

So much of Vista being "stable".......this is the second time Vista has gone titsup on me after an update (different update mind you).


The irony is that the "unsupported" OS is still better than the crap Microsoft has been forcing down our throat.

 

XP is still supported by Microsoft.

 

Unsurported by dell for the M1330

 

the same thing happened with my 1520 and the creative camera drivers on dells site.

I think an update from microsft is probably to blame but I am too lazy to do a trial and error on uninstalling updates.

 

You may want to check the Dell site, support section, to see what driver they currently have there for your model for the nVidia card, and use that one.

Worst case, you could try reinstalling the OS from scratch.

 

Best practice is to avoid driver downloads via Windows Update, stick with the
OEM or manufacturers unless Microsoft already provides your driver for it like CDROM's, USB, etc.

Video drivers are probably the last driver that I'd update via Windows Update.

 

I had this happen also on my 1520. The update changes the AHCI driver from the Intel one back to the Microsoft one. The Microsoft driver will cause the Blue screen when doing a warm reboot, but a cold reboot (Power down completely, then turn back on) works OK.

To fix it, download the SATA driver from Dell, it unzips to C:\dell\drivers\R154200

Then go into Device Manager, find the AHCI controler under 'IDE ATA/ATAPI controlers' Right click and select Update Driver. Click 'Browse my computer' Then select the folder where it was unziped.

It will reboot and then worked fine for me!

 

Thanks.. this seem to have worked.. I recently installed R154198 and since then I have not been facing the problem. I still went ahead and tried to update the AHCI controler driver as you suggested below and it returned the message that my driver is uptodate. Anyways I am happy for the past few days there has not been a problem even when I do a reboot. Thank you guys.