crashing while I am sleeping, laptop left running

[SteveH66]

I leave my Acer 5733Z laptop running most of the time. The past few days, I have been waking up to see that the system crashed during the night. I get the safe mode startup screen when I restart the computer. I don't know what is causing this, although I did run Iobit Advanced System Care 7 the night before this happened. I thought perhaps this was causing it, and ASC 7 had run a driver optimizer routine before. The first night it did this, the next morning my keyboard and trackpad on the mouse were not working. I downloaded a LINUX live CD and booted up with that, keyboard and mouse were both working fine so I am pretty sure it wasn't a hardware failure.

In a support forum I read that I should go into safe mode and start up with the 'last known good configuration' so I did this. It booted up then, but my DVD burner was not working, the door would not open. It had worked under LINUX and in pre-startup obviously, as I was able to run the live CD. And the computer was recognizing it and I could check it's properties, it just wouldn't run and the drawer wouldn't slide out or even unlock. I saw a forum post about restoring to an earlier restore point, did this, didn't fix it. So then I unistalled the DVD driver. Windows found one but it was the wrong make and model that it installed a driver for, and it didn't work. Another forum post said to reinstall the chipset drivers, which I did. While system was shut down, I also removed the DVD drive and reseated it, then turned the system back on.

I got my correct DVD driver back that way, and I thought I was good to go. Then the system started this crashing. So, I used ASC 7 and rolled back it's driver changes, it backs up the driver settings before it optimizes. Still didn't fix the problem. So I came here, hoping someone could help. I followed the instructions about BSOD reporting, downloading one of the recommended programs and running it to get a dump of the various logs and such. I will attach them at the end of this message, and hopefully someone will be able to make some sense of this for me. By the way, I restarted my system at sometime after 1500 hours today, and I found that in the event log at the end. I paged up the event log looking at events from an earlier time but didn't see anything that stuck out to me. So here is the dump file. Thanks

 

[derekimo]

Hi There,

Unfortunately,

There aren't any .dmp file in your attachment. These are required to analyse the BSOD.

Follow these steps:

Dump Files - Configure Windows to Create on BSOD

Then, when the system next BSOD's, follow this:

1. Download this file to your desktop or other convenient location,


Download



2. Double click on the file to run it.

3. Locate the .ZIP file created on your desktop, and upload it here in your next reply.

I really hate to see the mention of IOBIT in your post, we see quite a few problems with that software.

 

[SteveH66]

Thank you derikimo. I followed those instructions, and kernel memory dump is chosen as the write debugging choice in the System Properties -> advanced tab -> startup and recovery window -> write debugging information

That is the program I used and that was the zip file it made as output. I'll have to go review that post and see if I missed a step.

Yes, Advanced system care is not impressing me here, it is going to be unistalled I believe. I have tried out so much different software, lots of installs and uninstalls, and there is probably so much junk accumulated that I am thinking about just doing a factory reinstall, pick a few programs I find vital and install them, and then get a disk image so I can quickly reinstall. Then only use software recommended from sites like this and a few others I trust. I also think it's time to get back into more hands on management of my system like when I was first into computers. Although I am sure that is much more involved than when I started, with DOS and no hard drive, just two 5-1/4 floppies and bat files and such

 

[derekimo]

You're welcome,

Try changing it to small memory dumps, that tool wont grab kernel memory dumps.

They are much larger in size, if you have a folder C:Windows\Memory.dmp you can upload the dump file to something like Onedrive and post the link here.

Believe it or not, quite a few have had to just do the clean install after letting IOBIT run on their system.

 

[SteveH66]

OK, changed the setting to small memory dumps and ran the app again. Sorry for the wait, didn't want to disturb the burn of my factory restore disks

And yes I can believe that about the IOBIT software, it seems to be the most likely culprit here in my situation. It got good reviews on download.com over at CNET, and that used to be a good place to find quality software way back when. Now I'm not so sure I'm going to trust their recommendations. The zip file is attached. Thanks

 

[derekimo]

It will have to crash again before you get a new minidump, there isn't much in that upload either, like the tool didn't finish.

CNET has also fallen out of favor since they started using their loaded installers on their downloads, hang around here we'll give you the best advice.

Did you look to see if you had the kernel dumps? C:Windows\Memory.dmp

 

[SteveH66]

I don't see memory.dmp in the windows root directory. The minidump directory is also empty. Did I miss another step? I made sure write an event to system log box was checked when I changed it to small dump. The path for small dump directory shows as - %SystemRoot%\Minidump. Should I boot up in safe mode after the next crash and run that program?

 

[SteveH66]

I am using UAC and running from a limited account, if that makes any difference

 

[derekimo]

No just wait for the next crash, the DM log collector will auto elevate.

The path is set correctly now. You don't need to go into safe mode.

It's just a waiting game now. Your first upload had everything except the dump files, the second one only had 4 or 5 items.

 

[SteveH66]

OK, thanks a lot for all your help derekimo. I'll just wait and see what happens from here then, if it keeps going like it is there should be a crash tonight

 

[derekimo]

You're welcome, just upload the files when it does.