Why does there seem to be more BSODs with Win 7?

tpriest said:

Thanks.

So far so good since the last BSOD on Thursday, I posted those details on the Crashes and Debugging forum and got a most helpful response.

At the moment (fingers crossed) things are ok and driver check programs, e.g. PC Pitstop Driver Alert, give me a clean bill of health.

Clearly if I get any more BSODs , I'll see if the dump can tell me anything (I use WhoCrashed) and take it from there.

Again, Win7 is the authority on its own drivers. MS spent a fortune to get the drivers into the installer and quickly updated via optional Updates, even paying manufacturers to build them so they wouldn't hold out as with Vista.

Driver programs are actually counterproductive with Win7. If optional Updates don't deliver a newer driver than installer, there is likely a reason for it. Only change drivers if performance problems point directly at that driver. Never change out drivers wholesale for newer drivers.

This is not XP or early Vista. Win7 learned the lessons of those OS's at the cost of about a billion dollars and is driver-complete with few exceptions.

I just spent a month troubleshooting a BSOD caused by installing a chipset over the one Win7 installer had given. One single driver in the chipset had set it off without any normal clues.

Thanks for that.

I've just had another BSOD and nothing specific is identified in the dump analysis.

I'll do a rebuild when I have chance, not sure but it may be a week or so, and then not install any drivers myself, only those from W7 itself and its updates.

Is that what you'd recommend?

And we'll see what happens.

I haven't had a bsod but I have had 3 viruses since I got 7 last december. they were able to stop mse and everything.
so windows doesn't seem to be any better than xp or vista as far as I've seen because I go to the same places on the net and (I never download anything suspicious. software or emails etc) with my xp pro. I simply visited a website and bam, my computer was infected with that darn fake security scan crap. 3 times now...xp I've owned since 2001 or so and I've never had anything. vista I've had since oh about 2007 without any kind of infections, and i don't run any type of security stuff on either one.
but 7...come on 3 in less than a year and I run the security on max settings along with MSE.

Wow, maybe I've been lucky or whatever, in 20+ years of Windows from 3.1 onwards I've never had a virus get onto my PC, though I've detected them on floppies I've received from friends and I've cleaned the PCs of friends who have been so infected.

Mind you, famous last words...

I would consider subscribing to Malwarebytes real-time protection in addition to running their scan monthly. It seems to plug any infection paths that MSE can miss.

You should also try another AV like free Avast 6 or perhaps paid ESET or Bitdefender .

Corazon said:

I was about to ask the same question: whether he upgraded from XP. Then I realized that's not possible - you can only upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 (and from XP to Vista, but that's another story).

It's either a hardware issue or a bad driver, of that I'm 95% sure. Were the correct chipset drivers installed, if any are available for your specific motherboard?

The fact that there is no XP-Win7 upgrade slipped right by me

To be honest I prefer to do a clean install as it means that it gets rid of the dross in the registry and elsewhere that inevitably accumulates over time.

I've just remembered that when I installed W7 it didn't install any NIC driver so I had no LAN or internet connection. Is this normal?

Clearly such behaviour means a driver has to be installed from CD or similar. When I re-install I have an up to date NIC driver which I can use.

If I remember M$ isn't allowed to install a browser or internet as they must be personal choices.

It was the NIC driver it didn't install, nothing to do with any browsers.