Help reading minidumps

Hey, I'm currently working as an IT for a nonprofit, and have a computer that is randomly rebooting, and can't figure out why. The computer is giving error code 1001, says the bugchecker is rebooting the computer, and to check the miniboot to see why. After trying to figure out how to read the miniboot for an hour, I'm comming to you guys for help.

 

err, minidump, not miniboot >_>

 

Hi FireSight. Welcome to Major Geeks.

These minidump files are indicating errors all over the place. Some possibilities:

Video card or drivers. ATI?
Nic card or drivers
Faulty CPU
Anti-Virus. Symantec?
and more.

My first thought is a bad or incompatible stick of ram. Second is corrupt files or file system, possibly due to an impending hard drive failure. If you haven't already, might want to back up any important files. If the hard drive is failing, the more it's used the sooner it will die.

You can use something like Memtest86+ to test the ram. Let it run for a few hours unless it finds bad ram quickly. If it finds bad ram, you'll need to test each stick individually by swapping them out and testing them one at a time.

chkdsk /r should be run on the hard drive but not until after you're sure the ram is good and you've backed up important files.

If you go to the web site of the hard drive manufacturer you should be able to down load their utilities for testing the hard drive.

BlueScreenView makes reading minidump files quick and easy.

 

Good info from Plastidust :clap

Drivers that need updating or removing (these all predate the release of W7!):

bcm4sbxp.sys network controller driver - update it from http://www.broadcom.com/support/

dwvkbd.sys virtual keyboard driver from Dameware - is this even compatible?
PBADRV.sys PBA support software from Dell
DamewareMini.sys (as dwvkbd.sys)
I wonder if the virtual keyboard is part of the Dell support install? I'd uninstall all of the 3 above!

atikmdag.sys ATI driver - comes with CCC, uninstall CCC and install drivers only for the ATI graphics card, if anything ATI loads at boot time afterwards (there might be 2 items) remove them from startup with Autoruns.

Then there are 2 Symantec/Norton drivers - I'd fully uninstall everything Symantec/Norton - use the Norton uninstall tool as well. Install MSE or Avast! instead and enable the built-in Windows firewall instead.



I'll try to debug a couple of the latest minidumps later, as windbg isn't responding at the moment - maybe I need to reboot the PC ^^