Two blue screens of death (BSOD) in as many weeks: Yikes, is it my under a year old desktop? Windows 7? Some of my apps?
I have no idea if I had a garden variety BSOD this morning, but it sounds like quietly muffled explosion. Like a fire, the screen flashes blue with a bunch of wispy white text (the smoke), then goes blank, sending the PC into shutdown and reboot mode. It asks me if I want safe mode given it did not shut down properly. Like the rest of world, I say “hell, no” and it boots up again and usually operates fine until the next BSOD (I have only done one PC system restore ever and it was on this machine three months after acquiring it).
After rebooting, up pops the dialog box holding out a shred of hope: “Windows is checking for a solution to this problem.” Having tried this alleged sleuthing and problem-resolution tool enough times to know it’s useless, my question becomes “Is there a solution to “Windows is checking for a solution to this problem?”” (Yes, you can disable it!)
Now I know the BSOD is not always Windows’ fault, but nonetheless gets the blamed in this household. It could be apps or even the HP hardware, but how in creation would I know? And what does it matter? Here’s a detailed description of today’s BSOD.
“Problem signature: Problem Event Name: BlueScreen OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3 Locale ID: 1033
Additional information about the problem: BCCode: 116 BCP1: FFFFFA800AD0D4E0 BCP2: FFFFF8800405FC08 BCP3: 0000000000000000 BCP4: 0000000000000002 OS Version: 6_1_7600 Service Pack: 0_0 Product: 768_1
Files that help describe the problem: C:\Windows\Minidump\101711-22198-01.dmp C:\Users\JohnDodge\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-50669-0.sysdata.xml
Read our privacy statement online: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=104288&clcid=0x0409
If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline: C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt”
Anyone care to translate?
I tracked down the attractively named “C:\Windows\Minidump\101711-22198-01.dmp” file and opened it, knowing full well, it would tell me nothing I could understand. It said PAGE a few hundred times and had a bunch of other incomprehensible symbols. Hey, I am just a user, not a Klingon translator.
I know Flash and Windows 7 are a deadly combination on my Win 7 notebook no matter how many times I uninstall and re-install the former. Flash is just hopelessly unstable on Windows 7…at least, that’s my experience.
In a brief exchange of tweets, ZDNet blogger, Windows expert and former colleague Ed Bott said occasionally Windows does find a solution and said that his experience with Windows 7 has been better than mine. I would add a lot of people “liked” my tweet “I love it when Windows checks for a solution and never finds one.”
Can mere mortals find a solution to a Windows 7 problem using this tool?
Follow me on Twitter.
6 comments On Windows checking for a solution…oh, really?!
Check the time prior to the first blue screen to see if Windows Update included any drivers. Most likely culprit, from your description would be video drivers.
It might be simpler to just roll back the display adapter driver if that is the case, or you can search for a better driver.
I have had zero problems with flash and windows7. I have twice encountered the, “Seaching for a solution” dialog, and in both cases just ignored it and closed it. On other machines it has found fixes for problems on customer machines. I tend to agree with the previous poster. I have had more trouble with video updates than any other update, hands down. If your current video driver is giving you no trouble, I strongly suggest disabling that driver update unless there is a malware problem associated with the current driver like a security hole in the source code.
Hello,
your blue screen is code 116;
usually, this blue screen is caused by the video driver crashing.
you should try some of the following troubleshooting steps
make sure you do not run on OC hardware, and that memory timings, voltages, and frequencies are set manually in BIOS to default values.
run the chkdsk utility on all the partitions of your hard drive.
update the video drivers to newest release version
update the firmware of your hard disk devices
update the BIOS of your motherboard.
if all of the above do not help, I run stress tools for each and every single component you have in your box. The BSOD you face is hardware related in 99% of cases.
Interesting and good info…clearly I have to update the video driver. I was wondering how the average PC user would ever know that the problem is a video driver. I’ve had this happen on other PCs, but no where near as frequently as on my notebook (although the rare BSOD I was writing about was on my desktop).
Have you ever tried the Driver Verifier?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244617
Just wondering what your experience was. I’ve never run it, though it was an impending desperation move at work until one of our desktop support people recently installed a new graphics card for me. So far so good.
No, but I will try it……thx
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