BSODS at random, no obvious cause. hal.dll / ntoskrnl.exe / pci.sys

starschwar · 09 Sep 2016

Of the past week or so, I've had quite a few BSODs, with no obvious cause. I could be playing various games (Star Wars The Old Republic and Lord of the Rings Online being my most frequently used), or just browsing the web in Firefox. Could be watching videos, listening to music, editing text. Could be completely idle. Could happen immediately after a cold boot after hours of cooldown time. Could happen after hours of use. I suspected it might have been related to the most recent NVIDIA drivers or a Zonealarm upgrade. I cleaned and reinstalled both - and reverted to a slightly older and more stable NVIDIA driver. It's still happening. Looking over crashdumps in bluescreenview would seem to indicate that the offending files are usually a combination of hal.dll, ntoskrnl.exe and pci.sys , but I'm really not sure what to make of it all. I would appreciate some help. If further information is required, just let me know. Thanks, everybody.

BorisTheAnimal · 09 Sep 2016

Hello starschwar and welcome to 7 Forums! :)

Most of the BSODs are of the BugCheck code 0x124 which indicates that a fatal hardware error has occurred. All of the 0x124 specific BSODs pointed towards that you have a problem with the PCI slots.

I went to the Alienware Area-51 R2 Support download page and noticed that you are running a very outdated BIOS which I've highlighted in blue below:

Code:

Version: A01
Date: 10 Jan 2014

Version: A08
Date: 01 Aug 2016

I would recommend that you update it, as it may solve your issue but you also mention that you had installed outdated drivers for your graphics card and that might also fuel the fire so to say, so please head on over to the Dell Support page:

Alienware Area-51 R2

There were also a couple of BSODs complaining about ndis.sys, and for that I would recommend that you:

Run SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker up to three times to fix all errors with a restart in between each. Post back if it continues to show errors after a fourth run or if the first run comes back with no integrity violations.

Cheers, Boris :)

starschwar · 09 Sep 2016

Thank you very much. I will test this out. Silly question: could this issue stem from a need to de-dust the computer? My temperatures have not been running high, nor has my cooling system gone into high levels of fanspeed, etc.

starschwar · 09 Sep 2016

Slight clarification regarding the drivers: the only one I rolled back was for my NVIDIA graphics cards, version 372.54 . Fairly recent - from mid August, I believe. I had been using them without incident before the onset of the BSODs.

BIOS update was without incident. I will share the results of my SFC checks.

BorisTheAnimal · 09 Sep 2016

starschwar said:

Thank you very much. I will test this out. Silly question: could this issue stem from a need to de-dust the computer? My temperatures have not been running high, nor has my cooling system gone into high levels of fanspeed, etc.

Well I mean I can't really unrecommend a de-dusting adventure

starschwar said:

Slight clarification regarding the drivers: the only one I rolled back was for my NVIDIA graphics cards, version 372.54 . Fairly recent - from mid August, I believe. I had been using them without incident before the onset of the BSODs.

BIOS update was without incident. I will share the results of my SFC checks.

Alright that was nice to hear, I would have been really disturbed if I had caused more problems for you.

Oki doki.

starschwar · 09 Sep 2016

SFC result 1:

Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files. the sfcdetails file is attached.

Meanwhile, temperatures do look a bit higher than they should be. But then again, it is Summer. I'll give it a good cleaning in a few days.

BorisTheAnimal · 09 Sep 2016

All is good, now the waiting begins :)

starschwar · 09 Sep 2016

All right...a second run resulted in the "detected but can't fix" state. Rebooting into safe mode, I ran it three more times (with a reboot into safe mode between each), each detecting and fixing errors. Would the logs be useful? I'm running it once again in windows proper. This resulted in the same message from the second run.

BorisTheAnimal · 09 Sep 2016

starschwar said:

All right...a second run resulted in the "detected but can't fix" state. Rebooting into safe mode, I ran it three more times (with a reboot into safe mode between each), each detecting and fixing errors. Would the logs be useful? I'm running it once again in windows proper. This resulted in the same message from the second run.

Yes please! :)

starschwar · 09 Sep 2016

Here are the logs for every run other than the first (posted above) and second (which resulted in that "can't fix" state). Thank you again for all of your help, Boris.