Crashes and BSODs on Acer Aspire 5740G

[mitsiusmitch]

Hi guys, thats my first post in this forum!

I 'm having problems with my Acer Aspire 5740G laptop too. Blue screens are very frequent, and they occur mostly when I 'm listening to music or playing multimedia files in general, while I 'm not doing anything else (mostly). The BSODs are also strange, as they don't capture the whole screen, just a small piece (about 640*480 px) in the centre of it and the rest turns black. A strange repetitive noise starts (as if the music media I was listening to was "stuck"). I 've already contacted the Acer Support team in Greece, where I come from, but they told me I have to perform either a factory reset and reinstall the OS, or take the laptop to a service centre in Greece. However, both solutions are from painful to inapplicable: I 'm abroad right now for studies, I don't have sufficient storage means for a back-up and, finally, I don't have the install disks of software I use (e.g. Autocad etc) with me. Any proposal or solution (other than formating, which is a brutal tactic in this case) is kindly accepted. I attach crush dumps and perfmon system report. If you need ANY other hint, please ask for it.
Thank you very much for your time!

EG1
I 've already tried VERIFIER but I entered eventually in BSOD loop while booting so I had to restore the system.

EG2
Computer type: Laptop Acer Aspire 5740G
Purchased: August 2010, brand new
OS: Win7 HP x64 (OEM), preloaded, never formated-reinstalled

EG3
I would be grateful if anyone could tell me how to examine myself my crash dumps, when I cannot find the cause of a BSOD by using Windows Error Reporting or Event Viewer.

 

[usasma]

Uninstall ZoneAlarm as it is the cause of some of your previous BSOD's (03Oct2010).
Use this free removal tool to remove the remanants of ZoneAlarm: http://download.zonealarm.com/bin/free/support/cpes_clean.exe
If you must have 3rd party firewall control, use this free program until we're finished troubleshooting: Windows 7 Firewall Control : Sphinx Software

Also, please uninstall the Catalyst Control Center using Control Panel...Programs...Uninstall a program. This program is known to cause BSOD's on some Win7 systems.

Here's how to analyze your own BSOD memory dumps. It's a bit overwhelming, but just follow it through, step by step, and you'll be able to see where we're going: http://www.carrona.org/dbgrpt.html

Please follow these instructions for using Driver Verifier. Please also pay close attention to the screen to see if there is a driver named on the screen (this is in case you have to restore the system again).

Using Driver Verifier is an iffy proposition. Most times it'll crash and it'll tell you what the driver is. But sometimes it'll crash and won't tell you the driver. Other times it'll crash before you can log in to Windows. If you can't get to Safe Mode, then you'll have to resort to offline editing of the registry to disable Driver Verifier.

So, I'd suggest that you first backup your stuff and then make sure you've got access to another computer so you can contact us if problems arise. Then make a System Restore point (so you can restore the system using the Vista/Win7 Startup Repair feature).

Then, here's the procedure:
- Go to Start and type in "verifier" (without the quotes) and press Enter
- Select "Create custom settings (for code developers)" and click "Next"
- Select "Select individual settings from a full list" and click "Next"
- Select everything EXCEPT FOR "Low Resource Simulation" and click "Next"
NOTE: You can use Low Resource Simulation if you'd like. From my limited experimentation it makes the BSOD's come faster.
- Select "Select driver names from a list" and click "Next"
Then select all drivers NOT provided by Microsoft and click "Next"
- Select "Finish" on the next page.

Reboot the system and wait for it to crash to the Blue Screen. Continue to use your system normally, and if you know what causes the crash, do that repeatedly. The objective here is to get the system to crash because Driver Verifier is stressing the drivers out. If it doesn't crash for you, then let it run for at least 36 hours of continuous operation (an estimate on my part).

Reboot into Windows (after the crash) and turn off Driver Verifier by going back in and selecting "Delete existing settings" on the first page, then locate and zip up the memory dump file and upload it with your next post.

If you can't get into Windows because it crashes too soon, try it in Safe Mode.
If you can't get into Safe Mode, try using System Restore from your installation DVD to set the system back to the previous restore point that you created.

If that doesn't work, post back and we'll have to see about fixing the registry entry off-line:

Delete these registry keys (works in XP, Vista, Win7):
        HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\VerifyDrivers
        HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\VerifyDriverLevel

More info on this at this link: Using Driver Verifier to identify issues with Windows drivers for advanced users

BSOD BUGCHECK SUMMARY

[FONT=lucida console]
Built by: 7600.16617.amd64fre.win7_gdr.100618-1621
Debug session time: Sun Oct  3 22:14:16.417 2010 (UTC - 4:00)
System Uptime: 0 days 0:14:50.009
Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 )
BUGCHECK_STR:  0x7f_8
DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT
PROCESS_NAME:  System
Bugcheck code 0000007F
Arguments 00000000`00000008 00000000`80050031 00000000`000006f8 fffff800`030c105f
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨``
Built by: 7600.16617.amd64fre.win7_gdr.100618-1621
Debug session time: Sun Oct  3 21:58:28.738 2010 (UTC - 4:00)
System Uptime: 0 days 0:23:01.330
Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 )
BUGCHECK_STR:  0x7f_8
DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT
PROCESS_NAME:  System
Bugcheck code 0000007F
Arguments 00000000`00000008 00000000`80050031 00000000`000006f8 fffff800`0308c05f
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨``
Built by: 7600.16617.amd64fre.win7_gdr.100618-1621
Debug session time: Sun Oct  3 21:34:29.703 2010 (UTC - 4:00)
System Uptime: 0 days 0:52:57.921
Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 )
BUGCHECK_STR:  0x7f_8
DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT
PROCESS_NAME:  System
Bugcheck code 0000007F
Arguments 00000000`00000008 00000000`80050031 00000000`000006f8 fffff800`0307e05f
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨``
Built by: 7600.16617.amd64fre.win7_gdr.100618-1621
Debug session time: Sun Oct  3 20:40:32.911 2010 (UTC - 4:00)
System Uptime: 0 days 7:55:54.503
Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 )
BUGCHECK_STR:  0x7f_8
DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT
PROCESS_NAME:  System
Bugcheck code 0000007F
Arguments 00000000`00000008 00000000`80050031 00000000`000006f8 fffff800`030d305f
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨``
  
  [/FONT]

 

[mitsiusmitch]

Verifier refused to help

First of all: Thank you very much for your immediate and straightforward answer!
I have also to apologise for not posting the reply with my findings earlier, as I experience problems with my ethernet card and LAN (described in another thread).

I 've uninstalled Zonealarm and no blue screen occured since (I 've let the computer on for about a day and it didn't throw any exception). I 've tryed also to re-enable driver verifier just to continue troubleshooting (without uninstalling Catalist at first). So the laptop booted up, and before loading windows throw a ("normal" at this time- not 640*480) BSOD. However, this BSOD REFUSED (again and again...) to dump memory to disk and reboot the computer, so I didn't manage to keep a record of these faults. I had to do a system restore to make the laptop functional.
I suppose the zonealarm drivers were the root of the problem, especially truevector monitor (hopfully, as soon as I haven't noticed a BSOD since). I won't remove catalyst as it is an update of the original acer provided (unless I see new BSODs to come out in the future). It 's a shame that zonealarm caused such severe problems to overall system stability; I 've been using it for years in other computers.

 

[usasma]

Zonealarm has had issues periodically with Windows since the XP days - that's why I gave up on using it myself. It'll work fine for a while, then an update will hose things. FWIW - I've given up on 3rd party firewalls now. I only recommend this free tool for use with the Windows Firewall: Windows 7 Firewall Control : Sphinx Software

Good Luck!