Minidump not working

[badkarma11]

Hello community,
I have the occasional BSOD. I have minidumps enabled in the system control panel, small dump, no auto restart etc. Thing is, when the 'puter BSODs, there's no log. I get 'BAD_POOL_HEADER" and a couple of others. Seems random, can go for days without any, then one day many. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance
'karma

 

[pbcopter]

How large is your page file?

 

[badkarma11]

I apologize for my lack of knowledge. What is the page file called in Win7? As I recall, it used to be called pagefile.sys and was in the root of C:. I can't find anything that looks like it. The size setting is 8 gig in the system controls but I don't know how big it actually is.

 

[pbcopter]

8GB is fine. The reason I asked is that if too small, the system won't be able to write the dump file, 1024MB is usually enough.

Have you run a memory test? I would run Memtest86+.

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

Sometimes, a system won't like two different types of memory installed.

 

[badkarma11]

I've run that a couple of times (last time was probably in late February) against my current hardware config, 7 passes each time, no problems detected. I could try again I suppose. I had 'turned off' dumps a while back, then turned it back on because of the random BSODs. I'll run Memtest overnight and see if anything shakes out.
Thanks for the suggestions pbcopter.

 

[badkarma11]

Memtest says all is well. I'm going to wipe my C: Drive and reinstall Win7. I had upgraded from Vista Ultimate and may have screwed myself during that process or when trying to find modern drivers for various things. I've had problems with some windows updates and SP1 (won't work no matter what). Clean slate time.

 

[pbcopter]

I think you're right. Good luck.

 

[badkarma11]

Thanks. I'll post an update one way or the other.

 

[badkarma11]

I did a clean reinstall of Win7 on a clean disc. No issues so far, when I did the upgrade last time I had tons of problems. All windows updates worked this time. I have high hopes. I will report back if any, or no problems.

 

[badkarma11]

So far, so good. The machine ran all day without a problem, and I installed Office and Steam and a couple of other things. Not so much as a hiccup and I think it boots faster. I should have done a clean install in the first place.

 

[pbcopter]

I have always found that a clean install is best. At least you know where you are starting from.

 

[badkarma11]

I wholeheartedly agree. The story was, I wanted to extend the life of my previous computer, so I got a better processor and a better video card. Got the CPU, worked fine. Got the card, it covered up all my other PCI slots (that meant no sound card and no wireless network adapter card). OK, new mobo. Got new mobo, needed different memory (DDR3 instead of DDR2). Finally said 'to hell with it', got a new case, power supply, memory. Took the HDDs and DVD drives from old case, built the thing. memory wasn't compatible with mobo (even tho Intel said it was) mobo doesn't like double sided memory. Went to staples, got single sided memory, thing finally boots. In the mean time I had obtained Win7 and by that time I was so sick of screwing with all of this i got lazy and upgraded instead of a clean install. The rest of my troubles are documented in several threads here (first, the machine would just stone lock up, power off to cure). That problem was cured by another new mobo (now I can use ALL the RAM). BSODs since then. The machine has been running for 3 days now without a hiccup. Sorry about the long winded rant, I've never had so much trouble with a PC in my life. All better now though.