Solved Randomly crashing Windows 7

[TheMacca]

Hi Karl,

It's not that the directory is empty it's that the directory does not exist at all. There is no Minidump directory inside C:\Windows.

Thoughts?

Macca.

 

[karlsnooks]

create one.
Go to an elevated command prompt.
enter following commands
cd /d %windir%
md . \minidump
exit


NOTICE the PERIOD between the "md" and "\minidump"

The period means relative to where you are at the moment.

 

[TheMacca]

I just got another crash. There is no .dmp file

I created the directory as instructed. I also had resmon running when things started hanging. The items in red were pidgin.exe and CoreTemp.exe. However, when I clicked on other stuff (Skype for e.g.) that hung and went red also. So I don't know if pidgin / CoreTemp are causes or victims.

The BSOD stopped when it said "Initializing disk for crash dump ..." again. This time I left it for 5 minutes and it didn't complete.

What next?

Thanks for sticking with this, it's uber frustrating.

Macca.

 

[karlsnooks]

macca,

From the researching I did, I recommend a 100% uninstall of Pidgin until this problem is resolved.

The next time you hang, only the first program in red in resmon needs to be pursued. The process will probably indicate others that are dependendent upon it.

Let's run driver verifier and see what the verifier catches.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/101379-driver-verifier-enable-disable.html

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Also please attach the .txt files generated by this procedure. Link to CCleaner in my sig.

LIST OF STARTUP AND INSTALLED PROGRAMS USING CCLEANER


STARTUP PROGRAMS
CCleaner | Tools icon | Startup button | click on Save to text file button (bottom right side)

Using the PAPER CLIP icon in the top panel of a Message Reply window, attach the startup.txt file generated by CCleaner.

INSTALLED PROGRAMS
CCleaner | Tools icon | Uninstall button | click on Save to text file button (bottom right side)

Using the PAPER CLIP icon in the top panel of a Message Reply window, attach the install.txt file generated by CCleaner.

 

[TheMacca]

I enabled the driver verifier per your instructions. Attached are the two text files saved by CCleaner.

Thank you,
M

 

[karlsnooks]

Macca,
rb: | MSCONFIG | STARTUP tab |
Uncheck ALL except for:
Sidebar C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe /autoRun
MSC "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Security Client\msseces.exe" -hide -runkey

REBOOT.

don't worry. You didn't delete anything. You just told Win7 to run the programs at startup time.

How do things look now?

 

[karlsnooks]

Uninstall Pidgin.exe

 

[TheMacca]

Okay Karl, I uninstalled Pidgin and unchecked all of the autostart stuff except for MSC and Sidebar. Interestingly, CoreTemp start up automatically after reboot. Is that significant?

What next?

M

 

[karlsnooks]

Macca,
CoreTemp has an option for starting automatically.

I recommend turning that off (and I use CoreTemp when I want to look at my temps).

CoreTemp |Options|Settings
see snip.
View attachment 172288

 

[TheMacca]

Okay, that's disabled now. Do I just wait now until it crashes again and post everything? Is it your suspicion that something being run automatically was preventing the BSOD from writing the .dmp file.

Thanks Karl,
M

 

[TheMacca]

Progress! I stressed the heck out of the box today and couldn't get it to crash. I was running multiple full screen videos, switching one of them to play a flash game, compiling under VS2008, Monodevelop and Erlang. I couldn't make it fall over. Later in the evening, I ranthe Microsoft mouse and keyboard applications ( the mouse behavior was bugging me too much ). About an hour ago, I went away from the computer. Came back just now and it was hung. It was still running, but the screen was black and unresponsive.

But, most importantly, there appears to be a dump file!

I've attached the jcgriff file to this post. BTW, Pidgin is still uninstalled.

Let me know what to do next.

Regards,
Macca.

 

[karlsnooks]

At last!

And here is the culprit:

ASACPI.sys        Sun Mar 27 21:30:36 2005

Go to the asus site and get an update.

This old driver is a known trouble-maker.

 

[TheMacca]

Hi Karl,

What exactly do I need to update from ASUS? There's like 47 options and I'm not sure which one will contain ASACPI.sys.

Thanks,
M

 

[MvdB]

1-ASACPI.SYS a major cause of BSOD's in the 2005 rev.

The pre 2009 version of this driver is a known BSOD cause.

The 2005 version of this driver is a known BSOD cause.
Please visit this link: http://support.asus.com/download/do...oduct=1&model=P7P55D LE&SLanguage=en-us&os=30
Scroll down to the Utilities category, then scroll down to the "ATK0110 driver for WindowsXP/Vista/Windows 7 32&64-bit" (it's about the 12th item down).
Download and install it.
Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers to check and make sure that the ASACPI.sys file is date stamped from 2009 or 2010 (NOT 2005).

 

[TheMacca]

Thanks to everyone who posted here. This appears to be resolved. 2 crash free days! Big thanks to Karlsnooks for sticking with it for so long.

Cheers,
Macca.