Laptop just restarted out of the blue

cormie

Hi,
I was simply browsing the net and all of a sudden my laptop flashed a blue screen with white writing for half a second and then restarted and gave me the attached error report.

Any ideas or suggestions as to what it might be and how I can fix it?

Thanks!

Khannie

Only happen once?

Don't worry about it. Probably a bug in some software.

If it keeps happening, grab yourself a copy of memtest, or run the prime95 stress test to see if your hardware is ok. Also consider running a thorough scandisk. (right click on the disk, tools->error checking->check for bad sectors)

BTW: that blue screen with white writing is commonly refered to as the "blue screen of death". It used to be a lot more common with windows 9x and 3.x but it's pretty rare these days thankfully.

cormie

Once so far. If it happens again I'll get really worried. Does the attached error report not say anything?

Thanks for advice Khannie!!!

Capt'n Midnight

sounds like the infamous BSOD - Blue Screen Of Death

NT used to give useful info on it's screen but in order to improve the user experiance they no longer print this..

if it only happens once - don't worry about it , officially M$ day windows 2000 crashes 17 times less often than NT and 40 times less often than 98 - they don't say it doesnt crash. under the bonnet 2000 and XP are fairly similar so the analogy still holds.

if it keeps happening then have you installed any sw or hw recently ?
also then in control panel - system - startup & recovery / advance - there is an option to reboot on STOP - untick the box so you can see the message next , when you have an error message you can look it up.

Windows 3.1 used to do this several times a day (different error but the same root cause, haphazard sw testing and no protecting programs from overwriting each others memory areas)

cormie

Thanks for that. If it happens again I'll start to get worried and check out the HW and SW stuff.
Appreciated, thanks

Your error report mentions STOP code D1, which translates to DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (in other words a device driver did something bad).

As Capt'n Midnight said, disable the auto restart on system failure function. (Control Panel > System > Advanced > (third Settings button on page) > Automatically restart).
Then if it happens again it should give you the name of the driver that triggered the problem. For example, my graphics card drivers once caused this problem and the file listed was "nv4_disp.dll". That should help you find out if you need a driver update. Sadly a Stop error can be caused by a hardware fault but this is rare.

Not all Stop errors give the file name of the culprit, but a lot of them do.

cormie

Ok cool! I changed that setting so hopefully i wont digging this thread up in a while, and if I do, hopefully it will be an easy sollution!

Thanks everyone!

cormie

It happened again :mad:
Please see attached image for error report this time.

I wrote down some things from the BSOD:

Stop: 0x000000D1 (0x82400000,0x00000002,0x00000000,0xf808aa98)

w22N51.sys address f808aa98 base at f8017000

Date Stamp 3ff54d71



Is that sys yolk the thing causing the problem?? What is it? I'll run the scandisc now, whereb would I get memtest or prime95? thanks!

Yep, sure is. According to Google the w22N51.sys file is part of an Intel wireless LAN card. (is it a Centrino laptop?)

Get the exact name of the wireless card and go to Intel's site for a driver update.

cormie

That would make perfect sense, I just installed new Intel software recently! but the thing is, what I installed is the driver update!

dub45

Is there any possibility that you could apply to start your own forum?:rolleyes:
'Cormie's Laptop' would be sufficient to alert everyone.

And just in case anyone thinks i am being unduly cynical - the laptop was purchased on 27th December 2004 so its not even three weeks old!:eek:

Just counted there, I've made 20+ threads that I wouldn't have if I didn't get the laptop! not that much really

And that was before this one!!! God knows there might even be more somwhere!!!!!!

If the problem persists you could always try system restore to take the laptop back to before the driver install.

cormie

Hopefully these late nights are nearly coming to an end.

I just have to get this driver thing sorted, and the DVD drive flashed with a new firmwave and I think that's it. Then I move onto the case of my old pc that I just got repaired that still wont work! May just sell it for parts.

So what do I do about the driver

dub45

cormie wrote:

Hopefully these late nights are nearly coming to an end.

I just have to get this driver thing sorted, and the DVD drive flashed with a new firmwave and I think that's it. Then I move onto the case of my old pc that I just got repaired that still wont work! May just sell it for parts.

So what do I do about the driver

I gave you a suggestion use system restore.

cormie

Sorry, I didn't see that, ok, I got the new drivers and all that on the 12th, but it didn't create a restore point at all on the 12th, only the 11th.

It gives a list of restore points on that day:
17:11 installed ms works suit add-in for ms word
17:09 installed ms word
17:02 installed ms works
16:47 installed unsigned driver file (think that was for the web cam below)
16:32 installed logitech quickcam


so if I restore it to the 17:11 time, will that mess up the ms word and works installation because the add-in part was part of the full installation. Would it be better to just restore it from the 17:02 point?

thanks!

elexes

do you have the roolback option for the device ? ( roolback to a earlier driver )

btw tho system restore is nice i would turn it off its a waist

ye and this board is for computers / computer probloms big deal if hes worried about the laptop most of us here like to hear about weird probloms and how to fix them . it keeps are general knowlage of computers intact

Its not uncommon for new drivers to introduce bugs. I couldn't use the Detonator 50 series drivers for my NVidia card as it caused a nasty stutter on the mouse pointer. I was stuck with 45.23 until recently, the newest 66.93 finally sorted my problem. But now The Simpson Hit & Run doesn't work properly, but that's possibly the game's fault, buggy and unsupported.

As has been mentioned, try using System Restore or using the device driver rollback in Device Manager.

cormie

It wasnt backed up to be rolled back to unfortunately.

If I Uninstall it from the device manager and then reinstall the original drivers, would that do the trick or would that just reinstall the software and the drivers would remain the same?

thanks for the support!

The software should contain the drivers. Remove the card's software from Add/Remove Programs. After that finishes, check Device Manager to see if the wireless card is gone. If it is then the drivers were removed.

If you have the original software it probably will include the drivers. Give it a lash anyway.

cormie

ok:) thanks!

cormie

Hi,
well I reinstalled the drivers anyway and haven't had the same problem since. It hasn't been that long but here's hoping!


But... the other day, just out of the blue again, the laptop just turned off. It didn't restart, just turned off without me doing anything. The power was connected so it wasn't the battery or anything. It didn;t have to go through any strange boot up sessions, just turned right off and booted up normally when I turned it back on. Strange.

dub45

cormie wrote:

Hi,
......................
But... the other day, just out of the blue again, the laptop just turned off. It didn't restart, just turned off without me doing anything. The power was connected so it wasn't the battery or anything. It didn;t have to go through any strange boot up sessions, just turned right off and booted up normally when I turned it back on. Strange.

The laptop has been discussed here so much that it probably has developed some sort of cyber empathy with Pie, the boards server and shut down in sympathy wtih it!

Oriel

If everything else fails:

Go to "Add/Remove hardware" and uninstall the network card.
Restart the machine, and you should get a "New Hardware Found (i.e. the card you just uninstalled)" box.
From there, just install drivers that you know will work.

S.

cormie

thanks sinecurea but I think i solved the network card fault that was restarting it, but the new thing is it just turned off out of the blue for some reason, doubt its to do with the network card..

Dub45, I took this photo just for you, it's the infamous laptop you've heard so much about :cool:

cormie

:mad: :mad: :mad:

It just happened again!! Restarted with the so called blue screen of death. It hasn't happened since the 14th. What's going on

quarryman

i don't know if its been mentioned yet but have you considered a complete OS re-install?

cormie

No, I haven't, do you think it would do much/anything? Could it be a loose connection in the laptop somewhere maybe?

quarryman

if i was getting that many errors i would do it. Start from scratch. It will probably rule out windows causing the problem.

make sure you have backups of things you need. do the re-install (format first) add one thing back at a time and see if the error occurs again. create lots of restore points.

cormie

But I don't want to be waiting 14 days or there abouts after each thing I re-install...is there anything I can do to check my system for faults?