BSOD on video playback

[puddingisfun]

Hi guys, I'm having trouble with my laptop crashing fairly often on video playback, especially YouTube. I've had this computer (ASUS N61Vn) for a little over a year and haven't had any problems until about a month ago, and since then I've been getting blue screens almost daily. It usually happens when I play a YouTube video, but yesterday I also played an avi file off of my external HDD in Windows Media Player that promptly resulted in a crash.

I have Windows 7 Ultimate x64 with SP1
CPU: Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q9000
RAM : DDR3 1066 MHz SDRAM
Video card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GT240M , with 1GB VRAM

If anyone could help me out I would greatly appreciate it!

 

[MvdB]

Hello Puddingisfun, welcome to SF!

You have had many dumps... with many potential reasons.

Please remove any CD virtualization programs such as Daemon Tools and Alcohol 120%. They use a driver, found in your dmp, sptd.sys, that is notorious for causing BSODs. Use this SPTD uninstaller when you're done: DuplexSecure - Downloads
You can use MagicDisc as an alternative.

Please renew graphics drivers:

When upgrading your graphic driver you MUST remove all traces of the current driver. In order to do that we recommend using Driver Sweeper

Driver Sweeper is a fast tool to remove driver leftovers from your system. It's very important to remove your drivers on a proper way, because driver leftovers can cause problems like stability and startup problems. You can use it if you want to update/remove drivers from your system.

How to use ?

There are two methods to use Driver Sweeper.
Both methods achieve the same results. This method is always able to clean all files.

This method will delete remaining files upon reboot (if deleting failed). You can clean your drivers this way:

- Use the official uninstaller(s) of the driver(s) you want to uninstall.
- Reboot your PC in Safe Mode.
- Run Driver Sweeper and select what to clean.
- Analyse lists all the entries possible to remove, cleaning removes the entries selected.
- More drivers can be selected for the same cleaning process.

What can it be used for ?
The current supported drivers are NVIDIA (Display and Chipset), ATI (Display), Creative (Sound) Realtek (Sound), Ageia (PhysX) and Microsoft (Mouse).

Phyxion.net - Driver Sweeper
When it is removed then download and install the fresh copy, from the manufacturers' site if possible.

and download latest from nvidia.com for your gt240M.

If, after that, it still crashes, please boot in Safemode w/ Networking and test.

 

[puddingisfun]

I tried whet you said and it seemed fine, but then I crashed 4 times yesterday, and I wasn't even playing videos for some of them. Once I exited Starcraft 2 I immediately crashed, and another time I BSODd right after I had restarted from another BSOD... I've attached the new dumps.

Pardon my ignorance, what exactly am I supposed to test for in Safe Mode and how do I do so?

 

[MvdB]

To start in safe mode: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/69585-safe-mode.html

Run it for a long enough while to see if you get crashes in this mode.

Depending on your environment, this could be caused by the laptops fan(s) clogging up with dust and then the CPU and GPU overheating.

You could check your temps while running normally (after safemode test) by using this prog (or another of your liking) CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting
HWmonitor

 

[puddingisfun]

It seemed fine in safe mode, but since the crashes are so intermittent I could have just been lucky. They've started happening during different times recently, now I've crashed once while playing Starcraft and once while playing Plants vs. Zombies. I've attached my minidumps.

 

[MvdB]

Thx, I'll have a look. Do you also have measured temps around crash time?

 

[MvdB]

I think we found something here. The last dump shows that you crashed while plaing something that uses popcapgame1.exe.

That exe has known compatibility problems with W7 64b

What you can try is to run that exe (or maybe the program level above it, Steam stuff? ) in XP SP3 compatibility mode?

 

[bkyriakid]

Its the GPU IMO

GT240M overheat problem - NVIDIA Forums

 

[MvdB]

GT240M overheat problem - NVIDIA Forums

Could well be, which is why we asked OP to give us temps.
But why post now in a 4 week old thread?

 

[bkyriakid]

Why me, why here, why now

This is an internet forum. Its not a real time conversation. 4 weeks or 4 years later, on an issued seemingly unsolved isnt a crime. Adding to the fact that
- i am an Acer Aspire 8940g win7 64bit, gt240m gpu, owner which costed 1700E + 150 Euros 3 year guaranee , in 2009.
-I am searching every forum for any solution to my laptop's problem , and documenting with related links from other user's experiences (in the link i posted above)