I left the machine on wireless networking and it crashed twice in six minutes, the second time it crashed it was sitting at the logon screen. The Realtek LAN error message came back. I think it must be appearing any time a LAN cable is connected. I am going to leave it hooked up to LAN for a while and see if it crashes. Tomorrow I will try switching out the vmnetadapter drivers.
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the updates, see my replies below.
Centrino Wireless Drivers: go here and select Windows 7 64bit.
Sigverif.exe: Maybe I ran this before I can't remember, I really thought it was automatic. As you've worked out, you can just run the Sigverif.exe and follow the prompts, then open the sigverif.txt file. I have the same version as you installed now, with no crashes so far. Have you checked all locations for the drivers, there may be more than one installed and try to replace them with the previous versions as well. There is nothing in the VMWARE website that I can find about the issue, so you may be the only one.... but hang in there.
Your wife: Must have went to same wife school as mine.... but don't tell her I said that.
Genome Research Institute in Singapore: Really? This country never ceases to amaze me.
When the Blue Screen occurs: Ok, continue to monitor this and see if you can locate when it occurs (i.e, the trigger). you may consider disabling the vmware network adapters until you need them. you can do this in Device manager or in Network Connections (by right clicking).
Our to do list
- Continue to monitor the crashes, find the trigger
- Advise if crashes still occur when the VMware network adapter is disabled
- Replace your drivers with the one that I posted 4.0.3.0 to ensure that yours is not corrupt (do this for all instances of the driver sa there is likely to be more than one copy))
- If Blue screen is still occuring, repeat the last steps with the previous driver I posted. If still occuring, repeat steps with the earliest driver that I posted.
- Check MS update to ensure that installing updates from Microsoft and not just Windows is enabled. Install all updates.
- Upgrade all hardware from the HP and Intel links provided (do this after the above step as the drivers listed on the MS update site may not be the latest)
If we can;t find anything after the above, then we need to look at re-installing VMware.
I'm out for the rest of the day, will check again tonight.
Timo
Thanks for your help.
My pleasure, it's what we do here
I forgot to add to our To-Do list, we need to also verify if running with your antivirus and firewall off causes the BSOD. I know this is risky business, so be safe and only open a browser web page like google and do a search. What we want to do is 'use' all our network adapters but not risk our system security.
You may also consider connecting to another PC on your network (if you have this set up). The different connection methods use different ports (e.g. basic internet surfing is port 80, and TCP ports are 135-139). This sort of test may show us if a particular activity causes a crash OR it may pinpoint the Firewall as the problem causing windows to block the vmware driver (also a common scenario).
If your up to it, feel free to conduct an complete isolation test where you disable all adapters except one and test for a blue screen scenario. Then test with another adapter enabled only. Then test back to the first adapter with the firewall enabled and then disabled, etc etc in an attempt to isolate the problem. This is ridiculously slow (after years in IT support, I know!); but it's usually fairly accurate technique in finding the problem.
Hi Timo,
Yes. Using wireless networking, I browsed the sevenforums site with antivirus/firewall turned off and got a BSOD within a few minutes.
Ben
What I do not know is if windows firewall is still running. I thought ZoneAlarm disables it upon installation.
I was wrong. Windows firewall was on for both public and private areas. What problems might be caused by running two firewalls at the same time? I am now testing the wireless networking in the absence of both firewalls.
Hi Timo,
I installed the latest intel centrino wireless driver, but just as the Realtek driver did yesterday, the intel updater hung for > 10 minutes. Before powering down the computer I verified in the driver properties that it was the updated. I double checked after restarting as well. The computer then lasted > 30 minutes without BSOD (turned ZoneAlarm back on), but hung on shutdown forcing me to power off.
I then logged on as administrator and replaced the vmnetadapter.sys drivers with the most recent version you gave me. I did this is in programfiles\vmware\workstation and windows\system32. When I tried to replace the copy in system32\driverrepository, windows told me I did not have permission. Still logged in as adminstrator, I selected properties of the particular repository subfolder. I chose security->advanced and tried to change permissions, I remember the window said SYSTEM was the current owner. I think I changed permission and it said I would have to close and click properties on the repository subfolder again for the changes to take effect. After I closed and right clicked for properties, the computer crashed almost immediately (I don't remember if I saw a blue screen at this time).
Upon restart, I logged back in as administrator using wireless networking, opened seven forums, BSOD in less than 3 min. Restarted, admin + wireless, disabled zonealarm, opened sevenforums, BSOD in less than 3 min. Restarted, admin + wired LAN, disabled zone alarm no blue screen. Restarted, logged on as my user + wired LAN, zone alarm enabled no BSOD. Windows firewall was shut down and remained shut down during all of this time.
Nice work.
The no BSOD's uniquely include
- Use of Wireless connection method, which is strange because the dump said a realtek driver and the wireless adapter is not realtek. Perhaps the names are close. Could you please verify the drivers attached to the wireless adapter and what their names are?
Also, were the vmware adapters disabled during the tests (see my pic, I have disabled one)?
Attachment 84589
The hanging on driver installations is worrying. what does the event log say?
I know that BSOD's are a harrowing and long process, so I like to let you know where we're going and what choices are left as we narrow down the suspects. So....
Action Plan
Check current assumptions of wireless adapter
- Test with the VMware network adapters disabled.
- Test with Wireless adapter disabled for a longer period of time.
- Post name of wireless device and attached drivers (we'll then check that these are correct)
What we've been doing here is matching the actual tests to the Event Log results and thus ascertaining if the dump report shows the cause or if something else is producing that result in the dump. In my mind we are now down to 2 possible suspects (wireless and VMware adapters, which were our original suspects except that now we are close to proving it) as we've ruled everything else out as potentials causes. Normally we can fix a BSOD like yours by removing the device, rolling back the suspect driver or updating the driver to the latest (fixed) version. On some occasions the BSOD only occurs in unique circumstances in which case the road ahead is limited.
The road ahead
If we prove that the wireless device is in fact the one that I linked to earlier (i.e. not a realtek device) and the correct drivers are loaded for it, then it looks to be a corrupt installation. The next question is "of what?" Windows or Vmware. All that is left to us (in order) is:
1. A strip and re-install of VMWARE
2. Contact the Vendor/s of the suspect driver and wait for their response
3. A windows Repair Install
4. A fresh windows install
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