BSOD Once or twice a day. Windows 7 x64 laptop


  1. Posts : 3
    Windows 7 Home Premium x64
       #1

    BSOD Once or twice a day. Windows 7 x64 laptop


    Hi there all. First post so I immensely appreciate any help you can give :) I've looked for the solution on other answered posts, but no luck.

    I thought after being on PCs for 23 years and owning many I would know what to do here, but I'm totally stumped. I'm getting a BSOD computer reset everyday for the past two weeks (if I can recall). It usually happens once or twice a day after a long day of having the laptop on, and usually right at a very inopportune moment such as working on music/doing University work etc. I've owned the laptop for about 5 months and had no issues before this. I could usually leave it on for days at a time and it would never shutdown.

    I was concerned it was maybe an overloaded memory problem, because sometimes I would run Google Chrome and the memory usage would sometimes spiral out of control, and I would also usually be using VLC Player and other things as well. I ran a few memory tests and it doesn't appear to be affecting anything.

    I was then thinking that maybe the laptop was overheating in it's current position, so I elevated the area where the fans are and had a portable fan running underneath it to cool it down. It made no difference.
    I also want to point out the BSOD can happen when I'm not even running anything, all browsers closed down and me not even touching the laptop.

    So I found Bluescreen Viewer and ran that. The highlighted issues that are causing the BSODs are ntoskrnl.exe and PCTSD64.sys. I knew what PCTSD4.sys was, so I completely erased PC Tools Spyware Doctor to see if that helped. I cannot find a way to fix ntoskrnl.exe through Googling, I'm completely stuck. According to the net I should run Driver Verifier so I did and it was causing a BSOD on bootup, but I do not know which driver it is that is faulty.

    System Specs:
    Alienware M17x Windows 7 Home Premium x64 OEM (OS came preinstalled. 5 month old system)
    Intel Core i7-2630QM @2.00Ghz 2.00Ghz
    RAM: 6gb

    Attached Zip File.
    Thank you for your help.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 5,405
    Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1
       #2

    Hi.

    Though the most recent minumps 19-Dec-11 20-Dec-11 21-Dec-11 points PC Tools Spyware Doctor crashes\bsod.


    Remove\clean PC Tools Spyware Doctor from your system and check for any left fragments.



    Download and install Microsoft Security Essentials with windows firewall enable.



    finish
    and post back.
    Last edited by panais; 21 Dec 2011 at 17:39.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 3
    Windows 7 Home Premium x64
    Thread Starter
       #3

    Hi,
    Thanks for getting back to me. Like I mentioned, I had already removed all traces of PC Tools after that last minidump. I have now installed Microsoft Security Essentials like you instructed. Looks like a nice little spyware program without the need for PC Tools anymore.
    What can I do next?
    Thanks
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 5,405
    Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1
       #4

    We must wait for results.
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 3
    Windows 7 Home Premium x64
    Thread Starter
       #5

    I've given it a few days and since deleting PC Tools I haven't had a single problem so far. So thank you for confirming that PC Tools was definitely at fault here, and thanks for recommending Security Essentials. It looks like a decent program and I wasn't really that keen on PC Tools anyway.

    Merry Xmas.
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 5,405
    Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1
       #6

    You are welcome!

    Merry Christmas! :)
      My Computer


 

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