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#1
Trying to figure out BSOD cause
I've been trying to figure out for the better part of a year what's causing the occasional BSOD. Found this place just now and I'm hoping to finally get it sorted out.
I checked with Who Crashed just before finding Seven Forums and it sounds like one cause is the ATI driver. The other stuff it said I didn't really understand. At least it doesn't sound likely to be faulty ram. I was becoming very worried it was a hardware problem but after seeing what Who Crashed said that actually sounds unlikely, which is a relief.
One reason I was very worried it might be a hardware problem is I found out at some point that a rodent had chewed the cord for the surge protector the pc was plugged into. This was a heavy duty surge protector too, with switches to turn off individual plugs on the protector. Hard to find a similar replacement
I don't know how long it was like that before I noticed, or if there was enough damage to affect the power going to the pc. But the wires inside the cord were showing. And AFAIK insufficient power supply can wreak havoc on a pc. I don't know if that info is useful for diagnosing BSOD or not.
Something else I don't know if it would help. It seems like BSOD is more likely if hibernation has been used. I've never had stability problems with hibernation on any other pc or laptop and I use hybernation a lot. It has also BSODed when hibernation wasn't used, so that's confusing.
Anyway I've downloaded the newest ATI driver through their autodetect tool, but I don't know if I have to uninstall the old driver first for the sake of trying to remove any BSOD issue that might be related to it. Usually I just install the latest video card driver without uninstalling the old one. Is that bad to do?