Bsod

distantsmoke · 15 Jan 2011

HP Pavilion dv7-3165dx Entertainment Notebook PC with ATI Radeon HD 4200 Graphics card. Used to work fine. Last few months, not so much.

Beyond frustrated.

Problem: BSOD when playing games, any games.

Have done countless hours, over several days, of research and sought help from HP. HP technician ultimate solution is to wipe my system clean and do a clean install. Can be done, has been done in the past, know how to do it, but for once in my life I would like to solve a computer problem without wiping the hard drive. Un-installed and reinstalled graphics drivers multiple times using different methods. Current driver is current. BIOS is current.

Get different Blue screen errors. Sometimes it says Memory Management, and sometimes PFN List (File?) corrupt, and probably other stuff I've missed because now I tend to walk away when I get a BSOD.

Sample Dump Files from Watchdog are available (since I have so many).
MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service
2 different dump files in one Notepad file. The second was much larger than the first. May be a good reason for it, I hope someone here can say.

Came across some threads that suggested the problem is with the registry. *LOOKED* at my registry and compared to what was in the thread.

Suggested registry entries:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\GraphicsDrivers\DCI]
"Timeout"=dword:00000014
"TdrDdiDelay"=dword:00000014
"TdrDelay"=dword:00000014
"TdrLevel"=dword:00000000

MY Registry entry:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\GraphicsDrivers\DCI]
Default REG_SZ (value not set)
Timeout REG_DWORD 0x00000007(7)

I *did not* change my registry.
I thought it was interesting mine looks so different, but I'm not a registry expert.

Have done multiple Memory Diagnostics, no errors found.

Windows installed latest updates yesterday.

Got rid of Norton Antivirus (just because - Norton seems to mess with everything on my computer and it gets irritating) and replaced it with AVG.

In all the threads I have read on many different boards, the people who "solved" their problem replaced RAM, Graphics card or did a clean install.

I have no reason (as far as I know) to believe my graphics card is bad, or that I need more RAM (though I plan on getting some soon). I ran furmark to stress the graphics card and my computer remained well behaved throughout the test. No funny sounds or screen artifacts.

I believe my copy of the atikmpag.sys was corrupted somehow (but maybe not). But removing and re-installing the graphics driver has had no effect. Searched for a way to repair or replace the file, with no luck.

Saw another thread saying "Plug and Play" in BIOS should be set to "Yes". Looked and saw no such option.

This computer is less than a year old. Mostly I'm happy with it. But this BSOD problem is wiping the floor with me (and crushing my ego).

Any help would be appreciated. I'll be happy to upload more dump files if wanted. And I can easily cause a BSOD on demand, so I can get a "fresh" dump file any time. All I have to do is start one of my games.

Thank you!

Zen00 · 15 Jan 2011

Since you've been getting memory management errors, that leads me to believe that one of your RAM sticks is corrupt (this happened to me last month). What I would suggest doing is downloading a copy of MemTest+ and running that overnight, see if it finds any errors. If not, then take out one stick and run your computer without it and see if the error occurs, if it does, then swap for the other stick. If the error still occurs, then either both your sticks are bad, or it's not the RAM. It could then be the RAM on the graphics card itself that's bad, but I don't know how to test that.

distantsmoke · 15 Jan 2011

Sheeesh, what's the point of a memory diagnostic that tells you * nothing* (windows mem diag, not memtest)?

I finally got memtest+ properly burned to a CD and managed to get it to run. Memtest itself is easy, but the whole burn to a disk thing was painful.
After less than 5 min, I had over 70,000 errors (and yes, I got the right number of zeros in that). So it's probably safe to assume my RAM is in fact fried? In the 20 years I've been using computers, I've never had bad RAM.

So It looks as if I'll be buying that new RAM with my income tax refund this year.

CarlTR6 · 15 Jan 2011

Now remove all but one stick of RAM and test that stick. If it gets no errors after at least 7 passes, remove it and mark it as good. Test the next stick in the same slot. Repeat until you have tested all of your RAM sticks individually. Now take a known good stick and test each RAM slot. Post back with the results. The idea is to find out which stick is bad and/or if you have a bad RAM slot.

Follow the instructions in this tutorial and upload the files in your next post: https://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-d...tructions.html

distantsmoke · 15 Jan 2011

Will do. It will take a while since it's a laptop. I've torn apart desktops before, but this will be my first time opening up a laptop.

CarlTR6 · 15 Jan 2011

Is your laptop under warranty? If it is, opening it could void the warranty.

distantsmoke · 15 Jan 2011

Honestly I'm not sure. I bought it Fall of 2007. Maybe I should check with HP.

CarlTR6 · 15 Jan 2011

I doubt that it is under warranty unless you have an extended warranty. Some laptops have a door on the bottom for easy access to the RAM.

Zen00 · 15 Jan 2011

The buts about it are, it will cost you $50 for 4Gb of good RAM anyways, so one way or another, you'll be alright.

distantsmoke · 15 Jan 2011

I just got done talking to HP and to my surprise my computer is still under warranty (until the end of March 2011), so I guess I lucked out. I wonder if i can talk them into increasing the RAM while they have it open......

Sigh, I was really resisting wanting to believe it was the RAM.