System crash at night every other night past 2 weeks

Not EXACTLY every other night, but it seems that way.

This is my office machine, Dell Studio XPS 8100, purchased October 2010:

- Win7 x64 Pro
- Core i7 Quad 870 2.93 GHz
- 12 GB DDR3 SDRAM
- ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB

This is in an office with a Server 2003 machine as the domain controller, and all machines in the office log onto the domain.

Typically in the evening I log off my machine, but leave the machine running (for updates, etc). Quite a few times over the past few weeks, I come in the next day, log on, and see the message "Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown".

In the Event Viewer, it looks like it's happening as a result of something called "bugcheck" running. It happened Friday night, based on the following messages:

Event 6008 8:58:37 PM "The previous system shutdown at 8:49:11 PM on ‎12/‎17/‎2010 was unexpected."

Event 1001 8:58:39 PM "The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x000000fe (0x0000000000000005, 0xfffffa800d6501a0, 0x0000000080863b3c, 0xfffffa800de6f8a0). A dump was saved in: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 121710-21028-01."

I logged off on Friday about 5:04 PM, and I know there was a Windows Update installed just after 7 PM.

Graphics driver is up to date. Not sure about the BIOS. What could be causing this bugcheck crash?

Follow these instructions
http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/96879-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html

post updated, thanks.

BSODs caused by an USB device, most probably an outdated adapter or similar hardware, I suggest updating its driver or uninstall it

USB Enhanced Host Controller driver - dated 4 June 2009 and Windows says it's up to date...

PatrickGSR94 said:

USB Enhanced Host Controller driver - dated 4 June 2009 and Windows says it's up to date...

Click to expand...

1. Do not rely on Windows for your drivers. It's well known to update with "older", possibly unstable, drivers. Go to the manufacturers or Mobo sites.
2. As a basic rule of thumb, any driver dated before 14 July 2009 is out of date.

Device Manager says I have Intel 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controllers (3B34 and 3B3C), which use the ubbehci.sys driver I mentioned above.

Went to Intel's website, ran their driver check utility and it also said everything is up to date.

Dell's website says there are 2 chipset updates for my machine: Ibex Peak H57 Chipset and AMT HECI (Consumer Desktop), both dated 8 January 2010.

I saw a couple of KB articles on Microsoft with files containing newer usbehci.sys files (dated around September to November 2010) but I'm not real sure if any of those would fix this issue.

Currently I only have 3 USB devices connected to my machine: Dell Ultrasharp 24" display (has USB ports on the side), my Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse with Logitech software, and speakers (I think for power only). I may try disconnecting the Dell display USB cord and see what happens. This XPS 8100 desktop also has top-side and front-panel USB ports.

Oddly enough, I have not had any more overnight crashes this week. It still seems odd that a USB device would be causing this crash when nothing is happening on the machine, it's logged off, and both monitors are in power-save mode (monitors turn off after 10 minutes).

Was on vacation between Christmas and New Years, now back in the office and apparently my machine has blue-screened while logged off, overnight, twice this week already.

I'm still not sure where I should go to update this usbehci.sys driver.

Unplugged the USB cable going to my 24" display serving the USB ports on the side of the display. Will see if this changes anything.

Have not had any apparent crashes in a couple of weeks now, until today it looks like it crashed around 4 AM this morning. Still not sure if it's the same thing as what happened previously. Also still wondering why it ONLY happens when the machine is logged off. The computer is set to NOT go into sleep mode, but monitors do turn off after 10 minutes.