blue screen of death, driver issue?

Okay, so i have a jhl90 laptop, with a windows 7 student 64 bit, nvidia 9600mgt, 4 mb of ram and a 2.8 core 2 duo processor.

heres my problem within the last few months i have been getting strange freeze ups. the mouse pointer will look big and fuzzy and will start to freeze on the screen. in the beginning i would check my processes as it was freezing up. I would see no funny processes drawing memory and in a few seconds i would get a blue screen of death. this has been going on infrequently for a while but it gets slightly worse. it started freezing completely right in the middle of going to the task manage leaving me with a frozen white screen at which my only option was a hard shutdown. it just happened a few minutes ago but this time as i opened the task manager it went to blue screen and then froze before any data could appear on the blue screen... my only option was a hard shut down.

My lil bro whose a computer science major seems to think its a driver problem but the sound of his voice and the fact that he gives no solution leads me to think he's not sure...

a few things should be noted, my hard drive is approximately 3/4th full, i use avast virus scan which has found nothing. this issue usually occurs when I'm on google chrome with facebook, OKcupid, yahoo and at least 2 other websights open. Usually skype and YIM are on as well. this started happening the night i figured out how to block websights and ads using my hostfile.

this doesn't happen all that often but the freeze is starting to happen too fast for the blue screen to come up and it is happening slightly more frequently. I just want to nip this in the bud before it becomes a real problem...

Thanks

 

If you could provide the BSOD error code (they look like this: STOP: 0x0000007F {0x012345678, 0x87654321, 0x0ABCDEF1, 0x01FEDCBA} ) and any file name listed, it would help a lot. Also, check your Event Viewer for any errors that occurred at about the same time as the crash. To access the Event Viewer: right click Computer, select "Manage", click the little arrows next to "Event Viewer", then "Windows Logs", then click "System". Post any errors that occurred close to the same time as the crashes, or maybe just any errors, period. It wouldn't hurt to track down the newest available drivers for your PC (available from your PC manufacturer) and install 'em....

 

how do i find the bsod log and here are the records of errors from the event viewer of the last time it happened.

 

Okay, sorry its been a while.

Since we last talked about this I have stopped using chrome and switched to Opera. I routinely use Ccleaner and i now do my big installations in safemode, just to be safe. Also i often get the latest nvidia driver and i have done so many times since we last spoke. I always fully uninstall all nvidia drivers, then cclean and cclean for issues then install the drivers and cclean again.

The issue this forum started on continues to pop up, all of my programs are continually updated. the problem happens more frequently when im on any browser on fb, but sometimes on other websights and rarely on the desktop.

I just downloaded the bluescreen viewer you recommended but im not sure how to use it. Note: ccleaner might be deleting my minidumps, lol im not sure how to get to them and im not even sure if ccleaner does that.

 

A couple of points re. CCleaner (also applies to other cleaning programs, too):
Don't set it to auto run at boot-time, it may lead to incomplete software installs, especially if you run the computer for more than a couple of days at a time.
More importantly, in the event of a malware infection, running any cleaning program, boot-time or otherwise, may lead to loss of data or the inability to repair Windows; some of the new infections can hide programs, menus, etc. in strange locations, including temp. folders that are ordinarily safe to clean.

Back to the BSOD
If you can copy any future minidump files from C:\Windows\Minidumps to your Desktop, zip them and attach the zip to your reply, I'll try to take a look at them to see if I can pinpoint any likely cause.

 

all of my programs are updated, i use the filehippo updater just about every day. I just click it and it tells me what to update. the only thing i dont use that for is my avast scanner and my video drivers which i get directly from their respective websites.

Basically the only program i have running at start up is Avast virus scanner. My computer just seems clunky when i have a lot running at start up so go in and manually disable most 3rd party startup functions.

I should note that I keep a very large host file. I use spybot to update it. I keep the spybot scanner on hand just in case but i dont have teatimer or sdhelper installed. I also manually update my hostfile using this http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ because it protects from ads and some other annoyances.

Thanks for the thing about ccleaner, next time it happens i'll be able to get you the next dump file.

lastly, at this point it seldom even goes to blue screen, i usually get the mouse freeze up, a visual anomaly and then the screen goes black at which point i just hold down the off button.

 

Mine's only 4.13MB Do you think your large hosts causes any slowdown?

How long do you wait to see if it will recover? Do you game/run gfx heavy programs? Have you checked with GPU-Z to see how stressed the various stats get under your normal usage?

Updating working hardware drivers isn't really a good thing - if it ain't broke, don't fix it Different story for gfx drivers if you had a top card and playing the most recent games, then the latest drivers would probably contain useful fixes.

 

Correction lol my host file is small, only 670 kb and it doesnt slow me down.

my smarter lil brother had me do a windows memory diagnostic test (twice) and i think around 13% it just spontaneously shut down. When i started it back up it started as if it were properly shut down without giving the option of safemode.

lastly it isnt getting to the blue screen anymore and its not saving any minidumps. It just hangs on the mouse then the screen freezes. Half the time theres a colorful or boxy visual anomaly and then the screen goes black and the fan picks up. from there i have to hit the off button.

 

the only games i play consistently are modern warfare 2, mass effect 2 and starcraft 2. the highest end games ive run are oblivion, crisis, farcry 2 and dragon age (which requires me taking off the back of the laptop so it doesnt overheat lol). The card has a history of overheating which i deal with though external fans and taking off the back cover but the card is fine in all stress tests.

besides the problem never happens when im playing games.

the only drivers i ever update are video and sound drivers.

 

From what you've described, it sounds like an overheating problem (regardless of all your "fixes") or the video chip (AKA the GPU) is failing. If you have already cleaned all fans and heatsinks thoroughly and the crashes still happen, then either you have a dying GPU, or a deep-rooted Windows/driver problem. If you have no important data on the PC (or a 2nd blank hard drive to install), you can try a drive wipe and reinstall Windows clean with all your drivers. This will tell you if it's a software problem (with a driver or Windows), or if it's a hardware problem. If there are no problems after a clean install of Windows, then the problem is solved. Otherwise, it's a hardware problem (which is the direction I'm leaning ).

What is a "big installation" and why perform ANY installation of ANYTHING in Safe Mode???? Unless you're dealing with brutal malware....

 

It's certainly reading more like a hardware/heat/memory issue now. You have to fix that before moving on to any driver/Windows/software problems.

 

by big installations i mean my video driver, any anti spyware or any anti malware program. basically anything that might have conflicts on installation with other programs. So thats sort of rare.

lol my lil brother was saying exactly the same thing. I mean the video card might have sustained permanent damage since it did overheat a lot before i figured out how to stop it. Plus at this point the laptop has to be about 4 to 5 years old.

I'm kind of running low on cash. Would i be better off buying a new computer or fixing the hardware?

 

We are in luck it finally managed to get to blue screen. i was using pandora so it might be different but it happened in the same way. the blue screen files are attached

 

The files attached above show problems with DirectX and with Nvidia drivers. Uninstall and re-install the video drivers, download the latest drivers available either from Nvidia directly, or (if this is a laptop) from the manufacturer's web site. After that, click Start > Run and type dxdiag and press Enter. Let it sit for a bit then look under the "Display" tab. In Win7, you don't ahve the option to run the tests if no problems are found (in XP you could run the tests regardless), but I could be wrong.... check for any Windows/Microsoft updates for directX.

I'm still thinking this is a problem with hardware. Either the GPU (aka video card) is overheating or failing (a well known problem in HP laptops with Nvidia GPUs), or it's a possible general overheating or a possible RAM problem. If reinstalling the video drivers doesn't help, and running a memory diagnostic comes up clean, and all fans and heatsinks are free of dust and build-up, and if it's a laptop and it's run on a solid surface (not a bed, carpet, pillow, lap, blanket), and if none of these apply, then it almost has to be a software problem.

 

Can you copy any minidump files from C:\Windows\Minidump to your Desktop and zip them and attach the resulting zip to your next reply, please?