Blue Screen of Terror

[seacue]

For your information:

At least six times over a period of two days (or a little more), my Windows XP Home presented me with the Blue Screen of Terror "Windows Has Detected a Serious Error and Must Close".

The leads identified Hewlett-Packard printer drivers. I hadn't updated them in recent memory and was not attempting to print.

Further investigation identified the problem as being with the driver for my HP Photosmart 7850 ink-jet printer, which I seldom use. Microsoft says that the driver [HPZid412/HPius12] "has stopped working and HP is working on fixing it". I was told to download the latest driver - which was dated 2005. Obviously no fix has yet appeared. This driver seems to have been used for the whole 7800 series and probably others.

I suspect an update to XP has made the HP driver incompatible. Of course the problem is HP's in Microsoft's view.

My solution has been to go to Control Panel and delete everything from HP. My system is again stable (knock on wood) and my Brother laser printer works fine.

[BEagle]

I've noticed a significant drop-off in computer performance following Bills's huge updates of a couple of weeks ago...

Many MS Office XP applications now seem to take longer to open and occasionally hang. And what is the MS solution after 'error reporting'? "Consider updating to a later version" - in other words, pay Bill yet more money....

Bolleaux - if your software security was so flakey, you can damn well provide me with a FREE updated version, you avaricious git!

[frostbite]

HP printers are, on the whole, decent bits of kit.

HP software is something else entirely, and many people have learned not to install it.

[Saab Dastard]

I learnt a long time ago NEVER to allow a hardware device driver upgrade from MS.

By all means update device drivers from the manfr's website, but MS Up**** found a new graphics card / printer / network driver? Don't touch it with a 3m bargepole.

SD

[seacue]

I spoke too soon. The Blue Screen of Terror occurred again.

seacue

[Sprogget]

Seacue, considered running debugging tools for Windows? I'm a great believer in that bit of kit.

[cdtaylor_nats]

Consider upgrading to OpenOffice and ditching the MS Office moneymaker.

[Sprogget]

A driver error has what to do with MS Office?

[mad_jock]

Undocumented OS hardware calls by Microsoft software.

Quite a few Office products can clash with drivers cause they don't go through the normal OS system calls to get access to hardware.

Its one of the reasons why Microsoft products sometimes have better performance than other 3rd party software doing the same thing.

[seacue]

I generally use FireFox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice. I have MS Office 97, which is used infrequently.

After the first series of crashes, I scanned the computer with SuperAntiSpyware, MalwareBytes and AVG 9.0, all free editions. Nothing was found.

After last evening's crash, I updated to FireFox 3.6. I also replaced IE8 with IE7. We'll see what transpires.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Now I wish I had been using TrueImage, etc.

seacue

[seacue]

Update, Thursday, 18 March 10 pm

A crash the afternoon of 15 Mar. when reading a message in Thunderbird.

A crash upon the first use of Firefox after hibernation, the evening of 16 Mar.

Later in the enening of Mar 16, I removed AVG9 and installed Avast! free.

I have used Firefox extensively since then with no problems. I started using Thunderbird the evening of 18 Mar with no problems so far.

I'll wait a few days before installing the inkjet printer driver.

seacue

[Peter Fanelli]

Anyone else notice that XP worked just fine until Vista came out, and now seems to be even more troublesome since Windows 7 hit the shelves.

I think Micro$oft cripples old operating systems via it's updates to encourage sales of the new junk.

Maybe I'll go back to windows 98

[P.Pilcher]

I have rebuilt XP pro on two computers now using a very old disc with a copy which hasn't even got SP1 on it. When I get it up and running, XP flies. Then it gets slower and slower as the huge number of mods and service packs are incorporated.
I suppose in an ideal workd one needs two computers: one with an unmodified XP pro to run today's fancy software but without internet access, and one running, say, Win '95 or Win '98 which modern viruses are not written to infect.

P.P.

[Tim00]

P.P.: If you do more than the occasional rebuild, it pays to merge SP3 (or 2) into your original XP CD. Search for "slipstream" for instructions: essentially you copy your CD to disk, extract the SP files, patch a config file & burn a new CD.

[P.Pilcher]

Thanks for the advice Tim I am aware that this can be done, but for the few times I have had to do it it is a heck of a lot of work for, in the end, little time saving. O.K. it takes a fair while to get the updating done, but it will take much, much long to study how to slipstream, then I will probably get it wrong a time or two then the updated, tested CD will sit on the shelf of year or so which will then want re-updating the next time I want to use it!

P.P.

[Arkroyal]

I've been battling the dreaded too.

Fairly old amd Athlon 2000+ with XP Pro which keeps spontaneously restarting or locking completely requiring reset.

On restart, windows goes through the usual 'recovering from a major error' routine.

I've tried restoring to an earlier time, registry cleaning, complete scan with AVG, and then Avast, updating drivers.

Then the reinstalling of windows and still the same problem exists.

I guess it must be a hardware issue, needing the old faithful to be replaced.

Any ideas before I fork out wads of cash?

[Sprogget]

Had a look in event viewer? That would be an easy enough place to start.

[jimtherev]

You probably aren't but...

Originally Posted by Arkroyal

I've been battling the dreaded too.


I've tried ... complete scan with AVG, and then Avast, updating drivers.

Then the reinstalling of windows and still the same problem exists.

You don't have Avast! and AVG both up and running simultaneously, do you? That can lead to ..um.. interesting results sometimes.

[Arkroyal]

Jimtherev,

No, I used AVG before the windows reload, then Avast after.

Sprogget,

Looking through the event viewer (new to me) I find, in the six days since starting over with reloaded windows, there are:

4 Errors, Source, Windows update agent, Category Installation, Event 20

9 Errors, Source, System Error, Category 102, Event 1003

3 Errors, Source, Service Control Manager, Event 7031

12 Errors (in 4 groups of 3), Source DCOM, Event 10005

1 Error, Source, RasMan, Event 20032

None of which means much to me, but may do to you. RasMan sounds a bit suspicious though.

Is anything significant?

Thanks to all for helping

[Sprogget]

This is your culprit:

Errors, Source, System Error, Category 102, Event 1003

Since you've done a rebuild, it strongly suggests you have a hardware problem or a driver issue. This article should help. RASMAN is nothing to worry about, it's windows remote access control manager. Definitely not your crashing issue.

The computer may automatically restart, or you may receive a "serious error" message or a Stop error message in Windows Server 2003, in Windows XP, or in Windows 2000