Windows 7: BSOD when booting windows. Huge dmp file.

After a bsod which I did not have the chance to see or read which happened at a random time (or so my friend says) when trying to boot to windows right after the windows logo comes up, a bsod pops up and the computer restarts. Then you get a choice to either enter windows repair or start windows normally. Start windows normally obviously returns the same result.

If I choose windows repair it fixes nothing and I end up in a loop unable to start windows. I tried these instructions here Startup Repair Infinite Loop Recovery with no success so I copied the dmp files from command line in windows repair to a usb stick and it’s 344MB! Should I upload to some host and post here or is there’s something wrong, Ive never seen a dmp this big.

You probably have a single kernel dump file of the latest crash in there, which is a good portion of memory that was pushed onto the dump, making it fairly large even when compressed (though compression greatly decreases the size). You'll need to send it to 3rd-party filesharing site for us to retrieve it. While it may not be necessary, and only the minidumps can be sufficient, a kernel dump provides a whole lot of info that the minidumps don't offer.

Have you tried entering Windows in Safe Mode by mashing the F8 key when the PC starts?

I can't enter safe mode either. I copied the whole minidump folder from command line, I'm attaching it. If I'm reading the dates correct none of these are are from the latest bsod. Tell me if I need to upload the memory.dmp too. Thanks.

They're all from January, with one in February. All except one are 0x116 bugchecks which means your video card drivers became unresponsive (or the video card itself). However, that would not explain why you can't get into Safe Mode because Safe Mode does not use your video card's GPU, but rather passes the video through and uses software mode for the display. Unless there's a very problematic issue with your video card, it shouldn't be the case.

The other crashdump revealed an interrupt exception delivered by some old Marvell AHCI/RAID drivers (dated June 30, 2010). I can see this more being responsible, as regardless of which way you load Windows, if the disk controller drivers to access the drive holding Windows are causing problems, then Windows won't load properly in any way.

I personally would recommend you provide us the memory.dmp for the latest crash, since all these other ones are relatively dated. It can give me a good bit of data to work with.

Thanks. I tried changing sata mode to AHCI (was on IDE) but it didn't work. Here is the link(s) to the dmp file. I rared it so it's ~50mb.

Hmm, I looked at it and it's dated from Feb 3, 2012, so it's no different than one of those which you already provided. I should've asked you to look at the timestamp for it prior to having you send it over. I apologize for wasting your time on that.

If you wish to give it another go, I recommend attempting to load Windows in safe mode, then provide the kernel dump for the crash that occurs when it tries to load Windows in safe mode. If you see that the system quickly rebooted or the bluescreen only showed up for a split second than the attempt to dump your memory to disk failed for whatever reason (could be related to that RAID/AHCI driver thing).

As for trying to find a resolution, I recommend opening the Windows Recovery Environment from the Windows CD (not from disk) and do a full Disk Scan followed by an SFC Scan. If that doesn't resolve things, you can try Fixmbr. If that doesn't work, then it looks like you have hardware failure. Note that before you do any of the aforementioned steps to switch SATA mode back to IDE as it was previously.

For hardware tests, use another system to burn a UBCD and run all self-test and basic tests on Seatools (under Drive Diagnostics) and then Video Memory Stress Test (under Peripherals). Be aware of any test results. You may wanna throw in Memtest86+ (Memory) for good measure (run it severals hours, preferably overnight).

Ok I will try it tommorow since I don't have access to the computer. When you say kernel dump it's the same as memory.dmp?

I did everything you suggested with no success. I did not get any errors in any of the tests. Tried to enter safe mode bsod while loading some files and then restart again. What should I do next?

Did the bluescreen sit for a while as it attempted to create a dump file? Did it state that it managed to successfully create one? You can provide us the kernel dump (MEMORY.DMP) file as you did previously, but make sure that you check the timestamp on it first. You should be able to see timestamps when using the dir command in the cmd prompt to list files. Verify that the timestamp for the crashdump file correlates with the time of the crash.