Random BSOD's want to figure this out once and for all

writhziden said:

And that was only about 10% of the corruption that is occurring on your system. I strongly advise that you Repair Install Windows 7 ASAP.

Yeah I'm afraid that that looks like that's the only option for me.

How much of my OS will this change? I read in the guide that if I do it right it will preserve my user accounts, data, programs, and system drivers, but I'm still a little worried.

Will I have to redo my settings over such as the color scheme, wall paper, pinned taskbar icons, control panel settings, etc?

I'd prefer not to if I'm gonna have to redo a lot of modifications, but if it will definitely make my system errors go away then it looks like my only choice.

The only thing that will definitely make the errors go away (assuming they are Windows based and not hardware based) is to Clean Install Windows 7. That will require more work and time on your part, so I usually leave that as a last resort. You will lose your theme with a repair install; I cannot recall about pinned taskbar items...

You can backup your theme, though. We can walk you through it if you wish, or you can follow the tutorial: Theme - Change or Save

For the pinned taskbar items: Taskbar - Backup and Restore Pinned Items in Windows 7

What changes did you make in Control Panel?

writhziden said:

The only thing that will definitely make the errors go away (assuming they are Windows based and not hardware based) is to Clean Install Windows 7. That will require more work and time on your part, so I usually leave that as a last resort. You will lose your theme with a repair install; I cannot recall about pinned taskbar items...

You can backup your theme, though. We can walk you through it if you wish, or you can follow the tutorial: Theme - Change or Save

For the pinned taskbar items: Taskbar - Backup and Restore Pinned Items in Windows 7

What changes did you make in Control Panel?

You don't have to walk me through it haha, I'm not a total noob when it comes to computing. But thanks though. I followed the links and backed up my theme and taskbar items.

When I said the changes in Control Panel what I was referring to was the settings of the Control Panel sub-categories. Such as for the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties changing the Taskbar buttons to Never Combine and Using small icons. Also such as in the System sub-category changing the Performance Options to disable Animating windows when minimizing and maximizing. I don't know why anyone would want this enabled. It just slows down the system with eyecandy that does look good, but allows your system to seem a lot faster and makes you more productive when turned off.

So basically I mean just the small changes to settings I've made throughout the Win7 OS. Another example being changes in the Folder Options (to show hidden folders, unhide file type extensions, etc.)

With a repair install will I have to redo these small changes to system settings as well?

The performance changes will be saved with your theme. Other small settings might, as well. You will have to change your folder options.

Just so you know I understand what you're saying: I recently did a clean install, so I understand the hassle of having to set things up as I like it, but it can be worth it to have a working system again. :)

Yeah that's true it is definitely worth it having a working system again. I just hope that I seriously don't get any more BSOD's after the repair install and that SP1 will install nice and smoothly so I won't have to worry about ANY of those things anymore.

I just have one more question before I do the repair install however.

What if I get a BSOD during the repair install? Then will my data and Program Files get messed up in the copy over?

I just thought of this just now and so I'm kinda worried. Some times I like thinking about worst case scenarios.

It is possible that could happen, so I am glad you thought ahead. I usually advise that people backup any important data before doing the repair install. For some reason, that was an oversight on my part in this thread. My apologies. Backup any important data before starting the repair install.

Alright so I did the repair install and a couple things happened.

First of all, the first time I attempted the Repair Install it went through copying the files and restarting. But then after it rebooted and started to finish copying files or whatever it gave an error and said "Cannot finish repair install. Restoring your previous Windows version" or something of the likes.

So then it rebooted and my files were restored. Kinda a waste of time since it took a couple hours but oh well. So I tried the Repair Install again, this time falling asleep. And I assume it went successfully since when I woke up it was on the Activation Screen where it told you to enter your product key.

So I did this and rebooted and now my system is working and everything, but I'm not exactly sure if it completed all the way because of two reasons.

First my desktop didn't look like the desktop image from Brink's Repair Install tutorial after it finished. I still had my programs pinned to the taskbar which I thought were supposed to disappear.

Second, when installing some updates I kept getting the WerFault.exe process to come up saying that the .NET Framework has stopped working unexpectedly. I just kept hitting cancel on this and then the updates seemed to install fine after that but it is still pretty sketchy you know? I have no clue if these updates failed or not, all I know is that something had to cause that to happen.

The differences with this new Repaired Install I'm on right now however, are that some device drivers got reset since my graphics card was displaying the wrong resolution at startup and my Aero theme right now is the default Aero Basic theme where everything looks visually terrible. I knew this was supposed to happen and I'm pretty sure it did but I'm still not 100%. Also my Recycle bin got emptied for some reason.

I'm also downloading a bunch of updates (there were like 87) along with SP1 which isn't installed yet. So I'll let you know if that gets to finally install with no issues.

So with all these things being said, I'm still kinda confused if my Repair Install worked or not. Do you know if there is a sure way to check? Thanks a lot.

The fact that you have so many updates means it probably went through fine. I would have to do a repair install to check for you to see if I end up with the same scenario. If you want me to do so, I can. It's been a while since I did a repair install with Windows 7, so I do not remember exactly how things end up in the end.

To check if updates installed or if there are still some failed updates, you can view your update history through Start Menu -> Control Panel -> System and Security -> Windows Update -> View update history

Well I installed all the updates and to my surprise they all installed successfully!!

Even SP1, which I've been trying to get all along! I'm pretty happy that this finally finished but man did it take a lot of work lol. I've been trying for a couple weeks now.

Well haven't gotten a BSOD since the Repair Install so maybe this did it. I know SP1 fixes a lot of things in Win7 so hopefully it will fix whatever was giving me those BSOD's.

I kinda forget that I made this thread for Blue Screens in general and not just installing SP1 but who knows, maybe they go hand in hand. If I happen to get another BSOD for some reason I will report back here but for now hopefully this should be good.

Thanks for all your help Writhziden. I appreciate you willing to do a Repair Install just for me haha, that's too kind. You will definitely get some rep for this.

I won't mark this thread as solved just yet in case I get another but if all looks good in a couple weeks then I will come back to do so. Thanks again for the help.

You're welcome for the help.

I am glad you forgot about the blue screens; that means the system must be running stable. I am also happy that you were finally able to get SP1 installed. :)

Thanks for keeping us updated. I look forward to seeing how the system is responding in a couple weeks.