Windows 7 Ultimate Crash without explaniation

[brettlee25]

Hi, i just got done with 15 hours of trying to install windows 7 home premium upgrade onto my brand new computer, i used the disk that HP sent me and it failed, it crashed on the last stem every time i tried to install it. The screen would be messed up and the computer was unresponsive, the only way to turn it off was by turning off the power. i decided to forget the upgrade and went out and bought the Windows 7 ultimate 32bit operating system, This installed just fine and i installed all updates and drivers for all hardware, i ran tests to make sure everything was compatible and every thing said it was just fine, all passes tests at %100. After about an hour of use the computer crashed the same way that the home premium would crash during the install, it shows a weird screen and is completely unresponsive. There is no driver issues, no hardware issues its a brand new computer and operating system i don't understand whats wrong, (and i did format the hard drive and do a clean install) please help me figure out this problem i'll answer any question i can,
(there are no dump files either i checked)

here is a picture of the screen when it crashes

crap Pictures, crap Images, crap Photos, crap Videos - Image - TinyPic - Free Image Hosting, Photo Sharing & Video Hosting

My computer specs are (Hp Pavilion Slimline s5123w) 300GB HD 3GB ram
here is a link to the exact computer i bought

Walmart.com: HP Pavilion Slimline s5123w-b Desktop PC Bundle with 19" LCD Monitor, AMD Sempron LE-1250 Processor: Computers

thank you for all your help.

 

[torrentg]

C:\Windows\Minidump

Copy a few of latest to another folder and .rar them. Attach to a post and we will have a better look at things.

"There is no driver issues, no hardware issues" - There's gotta be something or bsod would not happen.

You can enable the system to create the files if set not to now...for next time it happens.

 

[brettlee25]

it wasnt a BSOD it just turns whatever color the screen is when it crashes it goes in that same pattern, i have another pic ill show u from when i was on the internet and it did the same thing, crash Pictures, crash Images, crash Photos, crash Videos - Image - TinyPic - Free Image Hosting, Photo Sharing & Video Hosting i looked for the minidump folder but it wasn't there so i dont understand what kind of crash this is sorry hope this info helps.

 

[Tews]

Have you downloaded the latest drivers for your graphix card?

 

[brettlee25]

yeah that was the first thing i thought of, i installed the ones that windows update said to, then i went tot NVIDA website and download the ones they had, (they were newer) and still the crash continues

 

[Tews]

go to event viewer and check out the application/logs for critical errors and take a screen shot and atatch them as an upload....

 

[brettlee25]

i dont have any image software installed right now hope u have word i pasted images in it if you need more i can get them thanks

 

[brettlee25]

Can anyone help me? I'm a college student and I really need my computer to be stable, I use it every day for work. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

[H2SO4]

Can anyone help me? I'm a college student and I really need my computer to be stable, I use it every day for work. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

I'm relatively confident you've got yourself a hardware-level problem.

If the warranty T's & C's prevent you from opening the case, make sure the BIOS itself is up to date. If it's already on the latest version or if the update doesn't help, test what happens when you don't boot the machine into Windows at all but instead stay in the BIOS configuration menu for extended periods of time.

If you experience the same symptom, it's a hardware problem beyond reasonable doubt - nothing which would qualify as "software" is active at the time.

 

[brettlee25]

Can anyone help me? I'm a college student and I really need my computer to be stable, I use it every day for work. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

I'm relatively confident you've got yourself a hardware-level problem.

If the warranty T's & C's prevent you from opening the case, make sure the BIOS itself is up to date. If it's already on the latest version or if the update doesn't help, test what happens when you don't boot the machine into Windows at all but instead stay in the BIOS configuration menu for extended periods of time.

If you experience the same symptom, it's a hardware problem beyond reasonable doubt - nothing which would qualify as "software" is active at the time.

thanks for the reply, i will check and see if the bios has any newer updates, but i'm sure windows update would have noticed it, and i'll let it run in the BIOS config menu all night to see if it locks up the same way, if it doesnt would that mean its a software issue?

 

[H2SO4]

... i'll let it run in the BIOS config menu all night to see if it locks up the same way, if it doesnt would that mean its a software issue?

Oddly enough, no.

While even a single instance of "the bad" while loitering in the BIOS config menu proves the hardware is unreliable, if it doesn't happen at all that doesn't prove it's not the hardware. Sitting in the BIOS menu doesn't exactly ex3rcise every type of functionality provided by the hardware for use by complex software such as an OS. Hence, you can't be sure whether it didn't happen because the hardware is not faulty, or because the faulty functionality was never requested.

If the problem doesn't occur in the BIOS menu, I'd suggest testing with a completely different OS - preferably not Windows at all, so that there's no likelihood of a software overlap. Boot with a Knoppix CD or Ubuntu or another NIX build, and watch what happens.

 

[brettlee25]

I was thinking the same thing yesterday, so i installed windows vista ultimate, and i ran it the whole day almost and never had a single issue, this is seriously the strangest thing i have ever encountered. I thought it might be the graphics, but i ran the tests with the pc-tools hardware scanner thing, and it said every thing mobo graphics, were running perfectly, and all drivers were up to date. Now i cannot figure out why vista works perfect on the computer but 7 wont. I do have one theory but i dont know anything about this, does the fact that the computer is a slimline and has (i think) lower voltage than a normal desktop effect anything. I'm pretty sure the power box is smaller, i remember while looking for a good graphics card (there are any i can find) that most of them wouldn't work due to low power output from the slimline. let me know what you think thanks.

also just to let you know, i have had this computer for about 3 (running for 1) and there was never a problem, it had vista home premium on it, and never crashed once and worked fine (just slow due to vista)

 

[H2SO4]

I was thinking the same thing yesterday, so i installed windows vista ultimate, and i ran it the whole day almost and never had a single issue, this is seriously the strangest thing i have ever encountered. I thought it might be the graphics, but i ran the tests with the pc-tools hardware scanner thing, and it said every thing mobo graphics, were running perfectly, and all drivers were up to date. Now i cannot figure out why vista works perfect on the computer but 7 wont. I do have one theory but i dont know anything about this, does the fact that the computer is a slimline and has (i think) lower voltage than a normal desktop effect anything. I'm pretty sure the power box is smaller, i remember while looking for a good graphics card (there are any i can find) that most of them wouldn't work due to low power output from the slimline. let me know what you think thanks.

also just to let you know, i have had this computer for about 3 (running for 1) and there was never a problem, it had vista home premium on it, and never crashed once and worked fine (just slow due to vista)

Hmmm. I fear you may be the victim of that most recalcitrant class of hardware problems - those which only show up when the hardware is "driven" in a very specific way by a specific OS or driver.

Let's assume for the moment that, based on your recent experience with Vista, the problem is solely confined to Win7. Vista is fine, and so would be Linux or any other OS you choose to install. What is notably different?

a) The OS componentry responsible for interacting with the video driver.
b) The video driver itself.
c) The collection of other non-video drivers which could potentially be affecting the outcome, seeing as they're kernel-mode components which have full access to all hardware on the machine.

Let's disregard (a) for now - down that path lies madness.

If it's (b), then the following test should prevent an occurence of the problem under Win7. Use an elevated (run as admin) instance of the CMD prompt to issue this command:

BCDEDIT /SET VGA ON

Then, reboot. You'll be in "basevideo" mode which uses an extremely conservative video driver built into the OS partially for the purposes of troubleshooting. If the symptom doesn't manifest itself, obviously the "real" video driver used normally is somehow part of the problem.

The last category - (c) - is The Biggest Pain In The A##e to troubleshoot. You'd really want to bypass having to deal with all that by simply testing what happens when the OS is completely reinstalled from scratch in "vanilla" style - no updates, no new drivers, no additional software... Literally nothing at all except the code which comes on the Windows disc.

Lastly, if you can open the case without voiding the warranty, try what happens if you jiggle the cables around or even move the video card to another slot (if available). I have no means of knowing whether your theory regarding slimlineness and/or voltage is correct, but it's possible that reseating a few cable connectors and cleaning a few contacts (with compressed air) may help.

It really, really looks like the hardware just going nuts. There's no software command for "I want you to play 'insane'".

 

[brettlee25]

Wow your knowledge is astounding I'm here at college Majoring in Computer Science Engineering, and I normally know my way around computer, but you are a master, I took off the side panel and cleaned the little dust off that i could find, cleaned the processor fan, and reseated the ram, i though maybe it was overheating, but after letting it run all night in BIOS it wasent hot at all, so i ran it in safe ode for a while until it crashed there too, and it still wasnt hot. Right now i did option # 2 and SET VGA ON and im in what seems to be 800x600, i hope nothing happens and it is my driver, but i really dont know what to do, i have the latest drivers NVIDA offers, and i used the one before that as well. If i must i'll reinstall 7 again fresh, i have all my software anyways, it just sucks that i have had to install it so many times, i'm wondering about this error because it did it when i was trying to install 7 with the home premium disks as well, so i guess that driver i was using was uncompatible with 7 as well. Hmmm.....

 

[brettlee25]

well i ran it in VGA mode for a little over an hour and did as many things as i could, movies downloads, word, games, and nothing happened i took it out of vga mode and installed the graphics driver again, (onboard graphics, Geforce 6150 SE nForce 430) and am now waiting to see if anything changed. i think that was the 2nd longest it went without a crash so i have my fingers crossed that the drivers were just weird. if you can find a more compatible driver for this card please let me know, thanks

 

[brettlee25]

well after an hour in normal mode it crashed again??? Any suggestions, maybe i didnt keep it in VGA mode long enough for it to crash. i have a paper due so i'm going to have to deal with this for now and save it every 10 sec but maybe i will try reinstalling it yet again. Let me know

 

[H2SO4]

well after an hour in normal mode it crashed again??? Any suggestions, maybe i didnt keep it in VGA mode long enough for it to crash. i have a paper due so i'm going to have to deal with this for now and save it every 10 sec but maybe i will try reinstalling it yet again. Let me know

When you have the time to troubleshoot, I'd suggest once again going into "basevideo" and staying there over the weekend if necessary - long enough to convince yourself one way or the other whether you can say "it does not happen" in that mode.

Ideally, you'd do that just after a clean "vanilla" reinstall of the OS too, so that if the same symptom occurs when using the normal driver but not basevideo, you can go back to the shop and claim repairs or replacement under warranty.

My gut feeling is that the hardware is broken and using the "full-featured" driver exposes that brokenness in a way that basevideo doesn't. However, deterministic troubleshooting of such a condition would be what's technically called "a b##ch", seeing as how it would possibly involve digital capture CROs and a soldering iron

Given the box is under warranty, you really don't want to be doing that yourself. If it happens on a vanilla install, RMA it and let them sort it out - after they give you new hardware which works.

Thanks for the compliments! I derive a perverse enjoyment from troubleshooting strange and complex problems.

 

[brettlee25]

Thanks for the help, i'll run it this way all day tomorrow during classes and stuff, i have never been able to use it longer than 2 hours so that will tell me for sure if it dosent mess up though i'm a little unclear to what that means. I guess i'll just find out how to do this warranty thing, i have never actually used a warranty before, i guess i'll just cal and ask questions. Have a great week

-Brett

 

[Snufffed]

Your Video Card is Compatible with Win 7.
I'd find the latest driver and install the DRIVER in Vista SP2 Compatible MODE.

then try it...

 

[brettlee25]

Your Video Card is Compatible with Win 7.
I'd find the latest driver and install the DRIVER in Vista SP2 Compatible MODE.

then try it...

How exactly do you do that, i mean i know your right click and set compatibility to vista sp2, but what do i right click, their are about 3-4 application in the drivers folder for NVIDIA?? thanks for the help