Solved Random BSODs

[wisecraker1]

This is the replacement of the previous that I had in November/December. And they replaced the main board and ram last time I sent it in.
It's either ridiculously bad luck, to get two bad laptops of the same make/model in a row, or there's a compatibility problem, I would think.
But yeah, it is probably not worth it to troubleshoot. Will just end up with more RMA's, replacements, and repairs.

 

[Vir Gnarus]

How is there a compatibility problem? What part is in it that could be incompatible? I would assume that they fitted all the parts inside themselves, and that you have no peripherals or any sort of external devices attached to the system. If so, and it's still causing BSODs even with fresh installs, then it does appear to be the rare case of getting dud parts or just not finding the right one.

So you said that you got a full replacement which still bugged out, and you sent that replacement in twice and it still bugs out? Either you are very unlucky in getting a replacement dud, or they lied to you and never replaced it with a new one. I'd say, demand a full replacement laptop one more time because you're tired of beating around the bush on this. That or just go to another more reputable brand (Lenovo, avoid budget models) or threaten that you'll do so to kinda push them in the right direction.

The only other explanation for all of this is if you somehow are installing some really buggy software every time you setup the computer. However Driver Verifier does a good job of catching unscrupulous software activity so that would've been discovered by now. We can still try DV but I'm not sure if it'll end up being fruitful.

I'm rather puzzled as much as you are on the matter, but I do believe it best to put that warranty to use. I'm sorry to hear you have to deal with the incompetence of HP's tech support and the result of it, but it may be necessary to continue that route or diverge to another brand.

 

[wisecraker1]

I'm not sure. I'm no computer expert, but my PC has not crashed in ~5 hours with me having the wireless adapter turned off via the keyboard button, whereas it was crashing consistently every 10-30 minutes this morning.
And I still had the old pc when I received the replacement, so I know they have me a new one that time. They could have not replaced the parts when it was sent in for repair though.
I guess I'll call HP again today when I get home and see what transpires from there.

 

[Vir Gnarus]

If the wireless is causing issues, the motherboard is the problem or the rare occasion where there's conflict with whatever router you are connected too. I have seen the strange case a couple of times where the router itself actually caused the problem and triggered the wireless adapter to BSOD. While I don't believe the router itself is the actual issue (all it does it route data), the wifi adapter may be acting funny when receiving certain packets. If you can, try purchasing a single USB wifi dongle and run wifi off of that with the onboard off (perhaps even uninstalled) and see how that goes. While it's cheaper to try running LAN instead of wifi to test, I wouldn't recommend it since I've seen that kind of conflict affect both wifi and LAN.

 

[wisecraker1]

Sorry, I guess I didn't mention. I don't have Internet access at my house, which is where the majority of the BSOD's occur. So the only thing connected and receiving/sending data is my Bluetooth mouse. The adapter is the intel Centrino-n 2230 w/ Bluetooth. I also tried two different mice, as well as every intel driver I could find (that seemed reasonably compatible) and the generic Microsoft one. Perhaps why more aren't having this issue is that I don't suspect many people buy the Bluetooth add-on for this laptop, and even fewer actually use it for a mouse. I'm just grasping at straws, if you can't tell.
Sorry for any typos, I am writing this on my phone :|

 

[wisecraker1]

Also, I noticed that in the task manager the Kernel Memory usage starts ~80MB paged and 50MB nonpaged, but with my mouse connected it rose steadily to 468MB pages and 60MB nonpaged. Seems high for not running any programs and just leetting the PC idle. And when I restarted the computer, it froze on 'shutting down' for 10 minutes before I held the power button. Is this related in any way?

 

[Vir Gnarus]

That is quite a bit for paged memory, but you don't have to worry that much about it, since usually paged RAM gets offloaded to the paging file on disk anyways. Now if it consistently rises without ever stopping, then you got a memory leak for the software used for the mouse, so you'll need to either uninstall that software or find and update for it (and possibly firmware update for the mouse too).

Now as for it causing all your symptoms, have you been suffering the symptoms even with the mouse detached? Try functioning the laptop without it and see if things stabilize. If they do, then you have a good clue there. Understand that doesn't mean it's the mouse necessarily, as it could be some issue with the USB ports it connects too.

Also, one thing I haven't considered, have you bothered checking your laptop's power settings? Try setting to another preset (preferably high performance if it isn't). I've seen this resolve issues with some people's laptops as hardware inside doesn't bode well with Windows hybrid sleep states.

 

[wisecraker1]

Well, I've been without a PC for over 3 weeks, I just got it back. Two hours and it crashed. YAY.
So I spent 20 minutes on the phone with HP executive customer relations, and then was transferred to tech support for almost an hour. Still crashing periodically, and they have and I quote, "No idea what could be causing this issues."
So I'm stuck waiting until tomorrow to talk to yet another case manager about the issue.
Also, in response to Vir, there are no firmware updates that I could find, and I did not connect the mouse since I received it earlier today. And it is always on High Performance.

But thank you all for trying to help, I'm not sure if I should mark this solved? or leave it be as an unsolvable mystery.

 

[Vir Gnarus]

I really think HP is not being honest here. Are you confident they've actually been replacing your entire system, and not just replacing parts? The whole thing needs to go.

Of course, there is also the possibility you've just replaced a dud with a dud. HP is labeled one of the worst in consumer brands for reliability of their products. I would not doubt this be the case.

Since the mouse is not involved we can rule that out. Have you tried testing the system's stability without any network connectivity at all? I have seen some rare instances where a NIC/wifi adapter bug conflicts with certain router models and settings, and will crash the system in such an event. Try isolating the system from any and all networks by turning off wifi completely if installed, and disconnecting network cables.

If you wish, if your most recent crash was an actual BSOD, check to see if there's a MEMORY.DMP in your Windows directory that's dated same time as the crash. If it is, zip it up and upload to 3rd party site. I'll try taking a look at it.

 

[wisecraker1]

Yes, because on the replacements I received the replacement laptop from China while I still had mine, and had to send the previous one back in the same box. I configured my system to produce full memory dumps, and when it crashes again I'll zip it and upload.
Just curious, I have access to a Windows 8 Enterprise edition, via my university free of charge, would it be worth a shot installing Windows 8 to see if the crashes persist? Because HP claims there is no hardware malfunction, which could be the case? With the network driver disabled, it hasn't crashed in about a day. But I am running into a problem where if the screen turns off after x amount of time, when I move the mouse or hit buttons it does not turn back on. I have to press the power button to put it to sleep, and then wake it up again by the power button or a keystroke.

In the mean time, if you think it is worth checking out, here is the SF report for the first crash of the system. The second crash didn't generate a dump file, which is odd.
The drivers that are installed are still the ones that come factory loaded.

-Thanks again.

 

[Arc]

This time the crashes are caused by Symantec Extended File Attributes.

fffff880`03b32778  fffff880`0178fe6fUnable to load image [URL="http://www.carrona.org/drivers/driver.php?id=SYMEFA64.SYS"]SYMEFA64.SYS[/URL], Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for [URL="http://www.carrona.org/drivers/driver.php?id=SYMEFA64.SYS"]SYMEFA64.SYS[/URL]
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for [URL="http://www.carrona.org/drivers/driver.php?id=SYMEFA64.SYS"]SYMEFA64.SYS[/URL]
 SYMEFA64+0xe3e6f

Description here: Driver Reference Table - SYMEFA64.SYS

Uninstall Norton and all Symentec products using Norton Removal tool. Use Microsoft Security Essentials as your antivirus with windows inbuilt firewall, and free MBAM as the on demand scanner.
Download, install and update those, and then run full system scans with both of them, one by one.

BTW, is it a HP's factory installation or a clean reinstall?

 

[wisecraker1]

Will remove once I download MSE again, it is a HP factory installation. I'm planning on clean installing today or tomorrow, but is it worth trying Windows 8 Enterprise or staying with Windows 7 Home Premium.

Last I talked to HP I requested either a refund or a replacement with a different model with the same/similar specifications. They said they'd get back to me on Friday.

 

[Arc]

Wait upto that time then.

If they dont replace it, go for a clean reinstall with windows 7 home premium. HP's factory installation is really bad. They bloat it with various troublesome junks which hampers windows native performance.

 

[Vir Gnarus]

The screen turning off probably just means the system is set to sleep after a short period of time. Make sure your power options are set accordingly, especially concerning your display.

If the system is stabilizing with your network driver being disabled, then this is probably one of those edge cases where your router is sending what's called a packet of death. That is, a packet of data that is normally innocuous, but there is a bug - be it hardware or driver - for your wifi/NIC that turns that data into a death sentence. There are certain brand/models of network adapters that harbor bugs that cause them to flip out when receiving certain data, like UPnP, or when receiving it from certain routers.

Have you tried alternating between either wifi or ethernet? Does the problem persist with both or just one? You may also want to try another router. I've also found that turning off certain protocols on the router helps as well, if you know anything about navigating the router's setup pages. Again, I've found UPnP (Universal Plug n Play) so far to be the worst offender for these packet of death scenarios, so try disabling it and see how things go then. Besides, UPnP is not worth much and is a pretty big security risk, so no point keeping it on anyways.

 

[wisecraker1]

The system is set to sleep after a set time, but it isn't going to sleep. The "Turn off display" setting is set to 15 minutes, for power saving. The screen goes black as is intended, but will not turn back on after I move the mouse, hit a key, etc. I have to put it to sleep and wake it up for the screen to come back. I tried uninstalling/reinstalling the display driver, and it still happens. Any thoughts?
Also, I talked to HP, they are in fact replacing the PC, but I lost phone signal and couldn't get a hold of them until I had to go to work. So I will talk to them Monday about the replacement. If it is a laptop, I will undoubtedly be having the same issues once again, as they only have the one network adapter with bluetooth connectivity in their laptop models currently. If it's a desktop hopefully it will be stable and have a different model network adapter as well. If not, I can change parts myself, as I am quite familiar with building custom desktops (Dreamt of building my own for years now )


EDIT: I did disable UPnP via the router page. Haven't had time to thoroughly rule that out yet.

 

[wisecraker1]

Well, they're replacing it with the exact same model again. I'll have this one when I receive the new one from their factory in China. Since disabling UPnP, I haven't had any crashes for a few days. So I thought it was safe to resume using bluetooth. I connected my mouse and now the system has intermittent hangs where Video, audio, mouse, keystrokes, etc. freezes for a few seconds and then becomes responsive and sort of catches up to where it should be, and I tried to shut down and restart the laptop several times, and it was stuck on the "Shutting down" screen for 1 hour before I hard reset the PC. So I tried removing my mouse completely and connecting my wireless bluetooth keyboard then my phone, same issues. There are no updates available to the wireless adapter windows 7 64 bit drivers past my current version At this point I'm leaning towards a combination of bluetooth/wireless drivers being at fault since there are no actual BSOD's after Vir's suggestion of UPnP (yet) and the other ones were credited towards Norton, which is notorious. That just leaves the chipset failures (before this past repair attempt by HP). Could they be caused by the Bluetooth/wireless driver?

 

[Arc]

Do it: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html

It will provide you better stability and performance than HP's factory install, which is utterly bloated.

 

[wisecraker1]

Will do. I've got the bootable ISO on a flashdrive ready for such occasions, as they are often

 

[Vir Gnarus]

Be aware it could be the bluetooth/wireless hardware and not the drivers causing the problem. Usually if that's the case, that means there's something wrong with the motherboard.

Btw, I forgot about, but type Services in Start menu and check to see if any UPnP service is running on your system. Make sure that's disabled otherwise that too can cause a problem, not just the UPnP coming from the router.

 

[wisecraker1]

Vir, here is the MEMORY.dmp file for the most recent crash. UPnP is also disabled on my PC and it wasn't running.

https://skydrive.live.com/embed?cid...=55363052924DE9AD!107&authkey=AA9_sVBsRv0w3KE