BSOD City

Thought I would share this experience and hopefully both help others as well as get some feedback.

On my T61p (see signature specs below), in the last two weeks I was getting 1-2 BSODs per day usually ending in a non recoverable PC crash. The crash would take out the RR as well which meant using Acronis True Image to re-install a prior hdd image.

The BSODs would all have different failure info but my main interest is WHY all the BSODs? I am less interested in what corrupt file to repair in order to recover BUT what causes the BSODs?

I am assuming that BSODs in this case were caused either by a bad virus or very unstable video drivers. Using Lavasoft Adware, Spy Sweeper, and Norton 360 and scanning often....I don't think the BSODs are caused by a virus.

But, I have been trying different video drivers from Hackez, laptopvideo2go.com, and other sources. So, I am wondering if others get a lot of BSODs from video driver instabilities?

The most recent test I am running was to put Ubuntu 7.10 on the T61p and am overjoyed with the stability (as well as the capability). The o/s pulls in and installs a nice Nvidia driver. I took it a step further and downloaded and installed Wine and am now playing my favorite video games on Linux. The stability and lack of BSODs has been a pleasure. For full gaming speed fps and resolution, though, I am sure I will be back into XP Pro as soon as I figure out what is happening with the daily BSODs in XP.

Any thoughts by anyone on the BSOD causes? Any tests I can make to confirm the causes?

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

 

I have heard of major BSOD's from installing video drivers. I have been over to the laptopvideo2go forums and seen many reports of BSOD. Are the drivers you are trying verified as working or are you purely testing them?

 

gengerald,

Many thanks for your input. I will go back to laptopvideo2go.com to read more about their BSODs.

I don't remember reading much about the BSODs on their forum.....just their polls on the different video drivers. Some drivers appear to have higher rankings by the forum users.

And, I am not sure what you mean by "verified". The different drivers are posted and available. I usually stick with the more highly ranked drivers....like 169.04, for example. The "hackez" mod in this forum is relatively new and different...which I also tried.

If you can post any url address discussing the BSOD video driver connection, i would appreciate it....I will keep googling and revisit laptopvideo2go.com.

thanks again.

 

I wish I could offer you some feedback other than that your post is on par with many (and I do mean many) Thinkpad T60 and T61 customers who have mentioned the BSOD's. The latest theory floating around beside driver issues is Turbo Memory. It seems that some believe there is a correlation between the Turbo Memory, which is a fairly new technology, and the BSOD's. Some people, however, do not have this technology and still report the same issues. I don't know if anyone really knows why. The problem does seem to be more prevalent in the Thinkpads than any other brand, but I don't know that for sure. Its just what it seems like at this point. Did you order your Thinkpad with Turbo Memory?

 

Actually, my T61p does have the Turbo Memory but was using XP Pro ... and I thought under XP Pro it ran without the Turbo memory in play.

I just finished running Memtest86 v1.7 all night and got three errors on the 2 x 2GB Ram sticks after many passes. I wonder if that is enough to cause the BSODs. I will try putting my original 2 x 1GB Ram sticks back in and re-running the Memtest86.

 

The fact that memtest found errors is (likely) the cause of your problems.
But did you run Ubuntu long enough to discover them?
I can't see how one OS will crash 2-3 times a day and the other never at all (if the memory is the issue).
Let us know what happens with the replacement memory chips.

 

steve,

Thanks for your inputs. I ran Ubuntu two days with no BSODs....but, of course, there would be no BSODs in Linux! I wonder what the equivalent in Linux would be to the Windows BSOD? I would be interested to know the answer to that if anyone can comment.

In gaming on Linux, I would get some PC freezing which would require a PC restart in Ubuntu.....but no corrupted files or o/s destruction as I had in XP Pro. I wonder if that is an equivalent to the windows BSOD?

And, yes, on the Memtest86 test, two of the three errors were the same error in different passes which tells me it is not a fluke.....a memory defect exists. And, maybe that is enough to corrupt some core XP o/s files and cause a non recoverable BSOD but not enough to take down an Ubuntu o/s. I also learned during this process and the Memtest86 web site that only in Linux can you actually apply a kernel patch to circumvent or program around a RAM defect. Another Linux advantage!

Now I have re-applied an XP Pro image from Acronis True Image Home 11 after replacing the RAM to my original 2 x 1GB. I also did 2 passes of the Memtest86 on the 2 x 1GB with no errors before applying the XP image.

So, let me see what happens now.

 

here are the 4 reasons of why you get BSOD

1. You have 4GB RAM and XP. Take one of the 2GB RAM modules away and see how it runs with 2GB RAM compared with 4GB RAM

2. You have the turbo memory and XP. You should install a special driver that disables the turbo memory under XP. Find it on the Lenovo's website

3. You run modified drivers from .laptopvideo2go.com . Some work fine, other don't. Install the standard lenovo video driver and try again.

4. You run that Sonic DLA driver with other CD/DVD imaging software. It used to give me BSOD as well. Uninstall the DLA driver.

 

This is a new input for me. I see the Sonic DLA driver in the Software add/remove list. But, I do not use other CD/DVD imaging software installed on the hard drive. I use Acronis but only for full hard drive imaging not for CD/DVD imaging. Do you see any problem with that...would you still recommend I delete the Sonic DLA software?



EDIT: Just installed or re-installed the Turbo Memory fix. I now show under Device manager the "Intel Hardware Reserved for Future Use" confirming the installation BUT, the Turbo Fix download recommendatio still shows up in my Lenovo updates.

 

No BSODs for 3 hours! Is this exciting or what?

 

what was the BSOD error? that using says a lot about the actual problem.

 

A few of them were related to a ntdll.dll corrupted file (STOP: C0000221 Unknown Hard Error /System Root\System32\ntdll.dll) fwhich I would replace with a fresh ntdll.dll file and the PC would be fine for another 1-2 hours untill the next set of BSODs. There were many other BSODs that I finally stopped reading and researching out of frustration. That is why I finally stopped and decided something major was wrong. When you read the BSOD google descriptions, it never actually tells you WHY the BSOD occurred...only what driver the error is related to...if you are lucky. I believe video driver and RAM caused BSODs are tough to nail down because they are tied into so many different things on the PC....and appear random.

 

believe it or not, it may be a combination of audio, video, and network drivers.

when i am at school, i often get the BSOD when surfing online, listening to music, and watching videos. The computer audio starts to skip and it goes into the BSOD.

this doesn't happen when i am at home.

I know how frustrating it is because one time i had about four BSODs in under 1 hour.

try checking all your drivers, and the stability of your network

 

i would use a drivercleaner and take out the the video drivers. then install a fresh chipset and video driver. after run a checkdisk with the /r switch from a boot/startup disk. you would not believe the power of a checkdisk. keep an eye on your crash logs and see if its the same .dll every time.

 

fortzum,

You may be right....but how would you "check" the drivers? And, how would define or check "network stability"?


techboydino,

Many thanks for that reminder of those capabilities. I had forgotton about them. Yes, chkdsk is a pretty strong program....I will try that.

I have seen driver cleaners recommended and tried them a couple of times. Do you think that is necessary when you have the add/remove program and are deleting the Nvidia line item before adding a new video driver? Have you seen problems before with that? If so, that could be related with all the video driver testing I have been doing.


Thanks to everybody for all the great inputs. You gotta love this forum. I would be lost without it.

And........5 hours continuous PC operation now without a BSOD! (I remember on other PCs going for a year without a BSOD for Pete's sake)

 

absolutely. i have had plenty of BSOD's with laptopvideo2go drivers. thats the nature of testing drivers not native to mobile cards. use the drivercleaner from here i would use add/remove but do not reboot after, then use drivercleaner. reboot and install good driver after reboot. (youll be in vga mode for the install after a reboot)

i would do the checkdisk before anything. that way if you have some bad sectors the system will mark them and not write to there anymore.

 

Excellent suggestion! I will do that.


Thanks again,


Alacrity

 

Glad you got it sorted it Alacrity (knock on wood). Did you swap out the defective ram too?

I'd run Driver Cleaner in Safe Mode. BSODs can be from hardware or drivers but quite often come from Video. I think because there's so many modded, beta video drivers floating around that they can't be 100% reliable all the time. I've had issues with laptopvideo2go drivers before but its usually pretty evident immediately after install. It was also the one time that I didn't use Driver Cleaner...serves me right.

 

Yes, I am running the original 2 x 1GB RAM now and have put aside the new 2 x 2GB.

Just completed running CHKDSK /r. Took quite a while. It found and corrected errors. I assume that those errors are corrupt files it found?

Hmmmm, damn this stuff is all interconnected. Defects in the 2 x 2GB RAM sticks started this whole chain of events?

Or, was it the laptopvideo2go.com video driver that started the chain of events and I had a defective RAM stick all along?

Thanks to all for helping me sort through all these variables.

Now 7 hours without a BSOD! Can I begin to hope that this is finally solved?!


Well, if it is solved, I will make three hard drive images for posterity: RR4.2 copy, Acronis Image copy, and a Norton Ghost copy for good measure. LOL!

 

I'm glad that is seems you solved your issues. Let's hope that things continue to function properly.

 

8 Hours without a BSOD! Plus 1 Hour of intensive 3D Gaming! I think I am back to my fantastic original Lenovo!

Now have a 2nd partition with an Acronis image. And, within the 2nd partition and within the Acronis image is a RR4.2 image. An image within an image for Pete's sake!

But, thinking about it. I have probably been re-applying Acronis hard drive images with corrupt files on the saved image......never leaving the BSOD black (or blue) hole.

But the cause? What was the cause? Unstable video driver combined with a defective RAM stick is my best guess.

Now it is beginning to feel like I have a new computer....a usable computer. It is curious, though, that I did not see any failures under Ubuntu Linux. I will have to remember that for an emergency.

 

As far as I understand it memory errors would manifest as OS freezes in Linux.
How are things now with the replacement ram(especially running Ubuntu since your drivers in Win may be questionable) ?
Did you run memtest from a bootable CD/Floppy?
Steve

 

As far as I understand it memory errors would manifest as OS freezes in Linux.
How are things now with the replacement ram(especially running Ubuntu since your drivers in Win may be questionable) ?
Did you run memtest from a bootable CD/Floppy?
Steve


Steve,

Hmmmm, that's interesting. So, the equivalent of windows BSODs in LInux are O/S freezes? I only got that during 3D gaming in Linux....but maybe that is the manifestation of the RAM defect. Also interesting how Linux appears to be more resilient against RAM defects.

I am now back in XP Pro with the original (non defective) RAM and am overjoyed to say the least. I learned a lot during this problem/process. RAM, video drivers, Linux vs XP, Memtest86, CHKDSK -r, and you name it. I am indebted to all the forum contributors.

And, yes, I ran MemTest86 v3.4 on my original RAM and my newer but defective RAM. Too bad I can no longer return the new RAM to Fry's (already sent in the rebate request). But, I am assuming that one of the 2GB RAM sticks is still good so eventually I will end up with the good 2GB stick and one of the 1GB older RAM sticks for 3GB under XP Pro. But maybe not.....as I said, I am now estatic to have a great PC system back and working well so I may touch nothing again (or at least for the next 30 minutes ... lol). After all, I am a technical tinkerer. I have to keep touching the hardware and software until it breaks....but that is how to learn after all.

 

It should be covered under RAM warranty. If you bought Kingston call em right now and tell em both ram are faulty, you have tested, then they will send you a support request via email, print, postage, send...2 weeks later new ram. This is the usual with most companies, especially if this is new.

PS: Remember never to touch the contacts on the ram

 

It's OCZ Technology but I will give it a shot. Thanks.

Alacrity


EDIT: Gengerald, That was a good recommendation. I see on the OCZ site that they are 6 miles from me and have a lifetime warranty!

 

SICK, def get them to replace em. If it was a 2 pack just replace both, but if they are separate, test em using hiren's boot cd, etc. then get a new one. Good news, cheers!

 

Gengerald,

Two fresh new 2GB RAM modules received today to replace the defective RAM. Free under the lifetime warranty.

Thanks again for educating me on that common replacement policy!

Alacrity

 

great to hear your back up and running.

 

Sick dude, hey, I help when I can, and attempt to(bs) when I can't . Good to hear both ram up and running, cheers.