BSOD after resume while on battery

jafolkerts · 25 Sep 2012

Good morning!

I have a Sony VGN-NW270F that has been BSOD'ing while on battery shortly after being resumed from an idle state. Please note that this does not necessarily mean it has been put into sleep mode and is being subsequently being awakened. In most instances, my wife will let the machine idle most of the day and unplug it to surf while preparing dinner. Normally within a few minutes, it will BSOD and continue to intermittently do so until plugged back in. I cannot replicate the issue while the laptop is plugged in suggesting that there is a power management / driver conflict.

Here is what I have tried:

Install new SSD Drive - Crucial M4 512GB
Reinstall Windows 7 Ultimate N x64
Install brand new ram from Crucial -- 8GB. Ram has been checked by MemTest86. I let the util run for 24 hours without any errors detected.
Updated all of the drivers from manufacturer's website
Installed new battery

A cursory review of the DMP files indicate that wininit.exe is causing the BSOD, which would explain the crash upon resume. Any further assistance would be greatly appreciated!

-Joel

Arc · 25 Sep 2012

Welcome aboard.

Your crash dumps are not showing any finite probable cause. In such a situation, it is better to enable Driver Verifier to monitor the drivers.

Driver Verifier - Enable and Disable

Run Driver Verifier for 24 hours or the occurrence of the next crash, whichever is earlier.

Let us know the results, with the subsequent crash dumps, if any.

▬ In between, check your hard disk for possible error, bases on the dump earlier than the latest one:

Reseat the sata and power.
Run chkdsk /f/r, following the option two of the tutorial Disk Check
Seatool for dos: SeaTools | Seagate download
Burn it in a blank cd. boot from the CD, click on "Accept", wait for it to finish detecting the drives, then in the upper left corner select "Basic Tests", then select "Long Test" and let it run.
If you are using a SSD update the firmware.

jafolkerts · 25 Sep 2012

Thank you for the assistance! During the Driver Verifier Manager setup, the tutorial instructs to select all non-Microsoft provided drivers. Oddly, I do not have any not have any loaded drivers that are not provided by Microsoft:

Any suggestions?

I will try the other troubleshooting steps in the meantime. Thank you!

-Joel

Arc · 25 Sep 2012

Hello Joel, Start it as a fresh one. Follow all the steps carefully. There must be drivers not provided by Microsoft, at least the device drivers like audio, display, network etc.

jafolkerts · 25 Sep 2012

After a fresh start, the non-Microsoft drivers are now showing and I have enabled the Verifier. I'm letting it run solely on battery to exacerbate the issue and am hoping (?) for a BSOD. I ran the chkdsk without issue and upgraded the SSD's firmware to a patch released today. I'll let it plug away for the next 24-hours and report my findings. Thank you!

-Joel

jafolkerts · 09 Oct 2012

After a few weeks, I was confident that I was out of the woods until my wife reported a BSOD while on battery. I have also been running the Driver Verifier since instructed at the last post. Thank you!

jafolkerts · 09 Oct 2012

It appears that this latest BSOD was caused by the system's WLAN driver. It has been updated and I will post any findings. Please let me know if anyone else identifies any issue worth addressing. Thank you!

Arc · 09 Oct 2012

it is caused by the Atheros network adapter driver.

Code:

Irp is active with 7 stacks 4 is current (= 0xfffff98051c60ed8)
 No Mdl: No System Buffer: Thread 00000000:  Irp stack trace.  
     cmd  flg cl Device   File     Completion-Context
 [  0, 0]   0  0 00000000 00000000 00000000-00000000    

            Args: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
 [  0, 0]   0  0 00000000 00000000 00000000-00000000    

            Args: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
 [  0, 0]   0 10 00000000 00000000 00000000-00000000    

            Args: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
>[ 16, 2]   0 e0 fffffa800858c050 00000000 fffff80002d0ada0-fffff98051c60f20 Success Error Cancel 
          Unable to load image athrx.sys, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for athrx.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for athrx.sys
 \Driver\athr    nt!IovpInternalCompletionTrap
            Args: 00014400 00000000 00000004 00000002
 [ 16, 2]   0 e0 fffffa8008627d40 00000000 fffff80002d0ada0-fffff98051c60f68 Success Error Cancel 
           \DRIVER\VERIFIER_FILTER    nt!IovpInternalCompletionTrap
            Args: 00014400 00000000 00000004 00000002
 [ 16, 2]   0 e1 fffffa80085a0040 00000000 fffff80002ac6200-fffffa8008b1b210 Success Error Cancel pending
           \Driver\vwifibus    nt!PopSystemIrpCompletion
            Args: 00014400 00000000 00000004 00000002
 [  0, 0]   0  0 00000000 00000000 00000000-fffffa8008b1b210    

            Args: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000

And really you should update it, coz that one installed is very old.

Code:

lmvm athrx
start             end                 module name
fffff880`03ca0000 fffff880`03df8000   athrx    T (no symbols)           
    Loaded symbol image file: athrx.sys
    Image path: athrx.sys
    Image name: athrx.sys
    Timestamp:        Fri Oct 09 08:10:55 2009 (4ACEA2B7)
    CheckSum:         0015580F
    ImageSize:        00158000
    Translations:     0000.04b0 0000.04e4 0409.04b0 0409.04e4

Disable driver verifier, run the computer normally. Hope there will be no BSOD soon for you. :)