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

[tpriest]

About 4 weeks ago I moved form XP Pro to Win 7 Pro 64-bit.

During the many years on XP Pro on different PCs I can't recall any BSODs - there may have been the odd one, but that's all.

Moving to Win 7 Pro 64-bit on my 8-month old PC I've had one or two BSODs a day. As all my drivers now show as up to date I hope BSODs are a thing of the past.

However I'm curious to try to understand why it generally seems that more BSODs are occurring on Win 7 than XP. My son upgraded his 3-year old PC to Win 7 2-3 months ago and, as far as I know has not had any BSODs.

Is it Win 7? Or is it going to 64-bit? Or what?

Just out of curiosity

 

[sgage]

About 4 weeks ago I moved form XP Pro to Win 7 Pro 64-bit.

During the many years on XP Pro on different PCs I can't recall any BSODs - there may have been the odd one, but that's all.

Moving to Win 7 Pro 64-bit on my 8-month old PC I've had one or two BSODs a day. As all my drivers now show as up to date I hope BSODs are a thing of the past.

However I'm curious to try to understand why it generally seems that more BSODs are occurring on Win 7 than XP. My son upgraded his 3-year old PC to Win 7 2-3 months ago and, as far as I know has not had any BSODs.

Is it Win 7? Or is it going to 64-bit? Or what?

Just out of curiosity

Well, I'm running 64-bit Windows 7, and have never had a BSOD, and since most people I know have never had a BSOD under Win 7, I'd have to say there was something slightly incompatible with your hardware - maybe you should check to see if you are running the latest drivers and such. Did you upgrade from XP or did you do a clean install?

 

[whs]

I have run Win7 in 32 and 64bit on 5 systems from day1 and even the Beta. I never had a BSOD. There must be something wrong with your setup. I suggest you analyse the BSOD dump.

 

[Corazon]

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?

 

[tpriest]

You're right, you can't upgrade from XP to W7, it was of course a clean install.

I'm sure that BSODs are the exception rather than the rule, indeed posters' experience here supports that view.

However, despite me looking for and installing W7 64-bit drivers it became increasingly apparent that even so they weren't up to date, as mentioned (or implied) in the OP, though I had taken every effort, or so I thought, to ensure I was up to date.

The point is that in general drivers (with one exception*) were never an issue with my present, or previous, PC, or my present netbook, running under XP. In the past I've never needed to run any sort of driver reporting program, I've run several recently to help me stabilise my W7 system (I may try running one on my XP netbook to see the driver situation on that). Such an approach was never needed with XP and it wasn't an issue I particularly concerned myself about as the system just worked, and worked fine.

My present system specs are posted in my profile and I don't think there's anything odd or special about them.

But it does seem that having the absolutely correct drivers is far more important for a stable system with W7 64-bit than it was for XP. Even having a slightly out of date driver now seems to be more potentially problematic than it ever was on XP.

I deliberately haven't talked about my specific BSODs, I posted a thread, with all the evidence, on the relevant forum the other day and have hopefully got it resolved. This post was more looking at the apparent generalities of the BSOD issues.

I don't know if anyone has attempted to see the ratio of reported BSODs between 32-bit and 64-bit W7 systems, perhaps there's far more experience of writing for 32-bit so they tend to be more reliable. I really don't know.

[* The one exception was with the Networx bandwidth monitor, a new release early this year resulted in frequent BSODs, reverting to the previous version cured it, I don't need Networx now so it's never been installed on my W7 system]

 

[gregrocker]

Follow these steps exactly to clean reinstall so you know you have the install perfect: Clean Reinstall steps

Then if you have any problems monitor the logs and use the System Resources to find the cause: troubleshooting steps

Any further BSOD's should be posted up to the Crashes forum here to find the cause and eliminate it: Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) Posting Instructions - Windows 7 Forums

It could be a single balky driver so start fresh with the Win7 installer and Updates drivers to get a baseline and go from there. Win7 is the authority on its drivers, unlike XP.

 

[whs]

I don't know if anyone has attempted to see the ratio of reported BSODs between 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 systems, perhaps there's far more experience of writing for 32-bit so they tend to be more reliable. I really don't know.

Actually I think the 32bit version is the exception. Now I run both and all my systems are stable.

 

[tpriest]

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.

 

[Layback Bear]

I have two computers on Windows 7 Home Premium 64 with no BSOD. Windows 7 come with a very good supply of drivers. To the best of my memory most BSOD are caused by third party programs that don't dance well with Windows 7. Microsoft did not create Windows 7 to dance with all 3rd party programs.. The people who make those programs must write their program to dance with Windows 7 32/64.

 

[kado897]

One BSOD cause by an old driver (win 7 said it didn't like it but I installed it anyway) and several by a duff memory stick. None in the past six months and I install all sorts of software. I have found that 32bit software is generally more stable however.

 

[gregrocker]

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.

 

[tpriest]

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.

 

[serpentracer]

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.

 

[tpriest]

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...

 

[gregrocker]

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 .

 

[sgage]

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

 

[tpriest]

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.

 

[tpriest]

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.

 

[wysiwyg49]

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

 

[tpriest]

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