Blue screen - Can someone read a minidump *.dmp file?

[kony]

Yes, I didn't think MS wrote it. But I read somewhere in the past that
the CL sound card driver bundled with XP install disk was stable.

I'm sure they made a best effort to make it so, but if it
was ok would they release newer versions?

If the
old CL was indeed the culprit I am glad to have finally identified it,
and have learned a lesson on that as well.

Nothing is identified yet, just don't be afraid to try a
newer driver. In general you should not use any drivers
that came with windows if you have a newer alternative.
That extends past the sound card to all other parts of the
system.

I have the same card in my old system, and it hasn't causes any obvious
problems running Windows XP. Works fine in Linux too it seems. But the
Linux Sound Blaster driver is part of ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound
Architecture) written by open source contributors.

It may not be the sound card, but if it were obvious at
first then there'd not be a problem, right? Trying a few
things is the remaining course.

I also had 'Plug and Play aware OS' set to NO in the BIOS. I changed it
to YES. I don't know if that makes any difference now, or would have, in
the past.


If MS didn't write the Creative Labs sound card driver bundled with the
XP install disk, then wouldn't this driver from Windows Update be a CL
written driver as well?

Yes, but that makes it at best as recent as what CL has to
offer and at worst, an older buggier driver. It isn't
exactly new now, 2004, let alone 2001 was eons ago in a
computer timeline.

After I read what you say here, I went to Creative's site, and they
apparently have a different driver for a Soundblaster 5.1 from Dell.

I had wondered about that but didn't write anything because
my memory of the difference and which sound card model was
vague. I know at least one Dell card was seemingly named to
be the same model but didn't have some hardware support that
the retail card did, so it needed to do some soft processing
from a different driver - although it wouldn't have been
uncommon for CL to have just merged all the files for both
types of cards into one installer then the installer
identifies the card and installs the appropriate files for
it.

This SB 5.1 is indeed from her old Dell Dimension 4100. When I selected
my SB Live! 5.1 Digital (Dell) through Creative's menu system I was
eventually taken to a page that told me, "Please note that the product
you have selected has been classified as 'End of Service Life'". With no
apparent option to download a driver. I then went to Dell's site looking
for the driver and they have no option to select Windows XP as the
operating system for the Dell Dimension 4100. So it seems I was stuck
with Microsoft supplied drivers, or doing a web search to find
something. The common SB Live! 5.1's latest driver at Creative's site is
dated 2003, like the driver on at Windows Update.

You might have some luck with a Google search like,
http://www.google.com/search?q=Live+5.1+Dell+driver
maybe throwing the word "XP" in as well.

2003 is an entire year, not a driver version number which is
what you'd need to compare them. Also there can be some
lag, when a driver is posted it may not be posted at both
the manufacturer's site and windows update simultaneously.

I think I might have went through this when I first built the system,
and just settled for the bundled driver. A poor decision I suppose. I
wanted her to keep the SB Live! 5.1 because I thought it would provide
better gaming performance.

It doesn't much matter now though. I have removed the Sound Blaster 5.1,
a TI chipset Firewire card that I had transfered from the old Dell,
moved critical data to the designated data partition, reformatted the C
partition, installed XP from scratch, enabled onboard SoundMax hardware
and installed its latest driver from Asus.

I did the clean install because AVG Anti-virus has detected several
viruses over the last few months (although I don't think they where the
cause of the fatal stop errors and blue screens).

It feels like we've been missing some critical info here.
Why wouldn't a virus be a suspect? Just because AVG can't
find anything now isn't always telling, some of them mutate
and let's face it, the ultimate goal of the virus writer is
for their creation not to be detected unless they want it to
be so, and AVG is a pretty popular AV due to being free so
any savvy malware writer would check whether AVG can detect
their payload.

I'm not suggesting it's probably a virus, could still be a
driver or something else.

Better question now is how did they get onto the system as
this is a potential security hole (even if a user opening
email with attachments) that needs closed to ensure a secure
environment.

Plus there was some
spyware, and three tool bars on the system. Could have stripped it all
away with Ad-Aware. But I was worried about viruses that AVG may not
have detected.

Yes, I've came across plenty of systems AVG couldn't clean,
some of the more aggressive viri will copy themselves
everywhere as fast as anything can find them, even have
separate threads just monitoring whether anything happened
to each (other) so if you or AVG gets rid of a file the
alternate thread just replaces it again. Real PITA to
clean, can take as much time as doing a clean install or
more, considering it's time spent at the keyboard instead of
letting the windows installer run unattended.

Yes, Asus probe read 33C at idol, while the environmental monitor in the
BIOS measured 38C. I'll wait and see. Hopefully I won't get another call
saying "it blue screened again". When I hooked her system back up at
here place, I noticed the lights dim for a split second when I turned
the system on, or even when I flipped the switch on the power strip.
Hopefully not more cause for problems and will ruin my reputation as the
family system builder.

Quite a few systems with a fair amount of capacitance in the
PSU will momentarily dim the lights due to inrush current to
the caps. Not a big deal so long as the (household) wiring
isn't intermittent which would tend to effect more than just
the PC.

You haven't mentioned if windows was fully patched (or I
overlooked it), there might be something more fundamental
wrong with windows itself as we do know it's windows after
all, plenty of things that don't effect everyone slip
through the cracks.

The clean OS installation was probably the best start
towards a solution, but if it ends up bluescreening once
every month or some similarly infrequent period then just
explain that they need to try more to isolate what the
common variable is each time it does, isolating something
that is rare and intermittent is difficult enough on a
simple electro/electronic/mechanical system let alone a PC
running windows.

 

[E]

Good detective work, now here's some suggestions for the "fix". Use
only the latest drivers from the Creative web site. Depending upon
the SBLive card you have (the model) it MAY only work "well" in a
particular PCI slot.

See my reply to other posters. (I cross posted at first, then tried to
post individualy to the three groups, then decided to continue with
cross posting again, sorry if the thread has become hard to follow)

This is an SB Live! 5.1 Digital (Dell). Seems its hard to get a driver
for this card with Windows XP from either Creative or Dell. I
reinstalled Windows and went with onboard sound among other things to
address the problem.

I have an old SB0100 (I think that's the model
number) and have had several "fights" with the card to make it work
correctly in 2 different mobos. On one motherboard, the card would
not be recognized properly by the Plug-n-Pray subsystem except when
installed in a particular PCI slot. In another system, the SBLive
caused system lockups (which I identified eventually by trying to run
the mixer at startup, and an instant lockup would occur each time I
ran the creative mixer), and ATM, I can't recall what I did to fix
that problem, tho I must have fixed it as it now works properly with
win2k and winxp in that box (a dual boot system). Heh, I found some
of the info on my SBLive horror story, you can read it here:

http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/image-vp437057.html

What ordeals. I will check out the link for future reference. In
addition I removed a Firewire card, and moved the old Lucent/Agere
chipset modem taken from the Dell to the top PCI slot. I let Windows
Update update the driver for the modem. Hope that wasn't another no no.
The modem worked great while I used my dial-up connection to install
security patches from Windows Update and drivers from nVidia's website.

In the end, the "solution" that worked for me was this: I put a newer
AMD Barton core CPU in the system and pulled out the 1.4G AMD Tbird
CPU. And, I can guarantee that the Tbird CPU was not defective
(memtest86 and prime95 stable as a rock), as it is still running in
another system. Isn't that the sh*ts.

Yes that can be frustrating. Works in one good working system, but for
some unexplainable reason, not in another.

I have only read about this prime95 recently, while googling the web for
solutions, and reading the replies in here. I haven't been
troubleshooting PCs much lately, exept for installing Linux on my box. I
used to run something called Performance Test, and do burn in tests with
Sisoft Sandra, which I'm sure you have heard of. I didn't run any of
these tests this time. I have what I think is quality hardware in this
system and its running in spec. But I am experiencing a little regret
over not running prime95 before I gave the PC back. Hopefully I won't
have a call to have to run it in the future on this system.

There is a "driver cleaner" program for the SBLive drivers, run the
driver cleaner (ctzap seems to ring a bell) before installing the
latest drivers. I recommend against using the MS windows update site
for obtaining SBLive 5.1 drivers.

The driver cleaner seems prudent, I'll look into that. There is also a
'third party' that writes drivers for SoundBlasters. kxdrv3534f-full is
the name of a driver I have archived on my HD. I forgot what the
advantages where, but the KX people claim it is superior and enables
features in the SB that are not in the Creative drivers. I forgot all
about it until just now.

I try to run Linux on my box now. I currently dual boot XP, and Suse
Linux 10.2. The ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) drivers for the
SB work well for MP3 and Video playback, but I have never gotten MIDI to
work in Linux. I think MIDI support is there, but might not always work
out of the box. Takes some effort on the user end to get it to work. But
thats just Linux. The worst thing that could happen in Linux is that you
would have no sound. Most Linux versions these days though I would
imagine work well with the old SB 5.1. But its usless to compare I
suppose, since Linux is a completely different animal. Linux doesn't
'blue screen'.

Hopefully the Windows Update thing doesn't haunt me on the Lucent
Winmodem driver. I used to assume that MS new best on how to integrate
drivers into there OS.

In the end, when it works right, the SBLive 5.1 cards are darn good
sound quality cards, imho, and I fought the battle to get mine working
in it's current system because it's my "digital recording" machine
which I use for recording/digitizing old vinyl records and for
recording satellite TV receiver audio/video programming which I make
into DVDs for my kid.

Yeah, I have an old full size Roland MIDI keyboard with weighted keys
from the late 80's that I hooked up to the Circuit City bought SB 5.1 in
my system. The Roland needs repair now (dust hopefully). But the
soundfonts for the SoundBlaster sound good to me. I think it could be
used professionally in this application if needed be. But then there is
probably better recommended sound hardware out there for this purpose.
I've been wanting to digitize old vinyl with the SoundBlaster too.
Haven't gotten around to that yet. The thing now seems to be a USB
connected turn table, but I would rather use my old Onkyo turntable that
hasn't spun in years. But with a new needle, a good preamp, and wave
editing software, I'm thinking I'd get better results.

Of course, there is one other possibility, such as some sort of
oddball driver conflict between the SBLive driver and some other
system driver. However, I'd give the "install the latest drivers"
approach a go before giving up.

She's sittin' on the table now. But I'm not throwing it away (I'm a PC
hardware pack rat). Will use the advice givin in this thread if I use it
in the future. I might need to find the latest Dell specific driver for
it though.

Eddie

 

[E]

I use 3 creative cards at the moment, and I must say that I do like them!..
But....
The onboard sound is probably fine for what your user wants (they had a dell
FFS lol)..\

LOL. Yes, that is what I have done, along with a complete reinstall of
the OS. I'm hoping the system has plenty of resources to run the Sims
with the onboard SoundMax. Just as long as there isn't some other
hardware problem that I have neglected to test for.

Removing the card AND the drivers and allowing it to run long enough to see
if it bluescreens means that you can eliminate it..
If it crashes with the card out AND drivers removed, then that's your
problem..

I had the system running on and off for over 24 hours. As long as 5 to 6
hours straight. I'm regretting not putting a load on the system to see
how it performed. Didn't do any benchmarks or burn ins. Hopefully I
won't get a call to run prime95. If so, I'll be back posting more
minidump results. Unless she gives up on me and the PC and buys a GD
Dell, with plenty of preloaded Dell helper applications to go along with
future spyware.

with Creative products the newest driver isnt forever the best, but I would
try to get say the last 3-4 releases.. I dont know if any of their patches
contain firmware fixes but you might want to be aware of that just in case..
(as you cant roll them back as easily)

See other recent replies I've made in these thread. This particular SB
is specifically a 'SoundBlaster Live! Digital (Dell)'. It came out of
her old Dell Dimension 4100. Creative no longer seems to care about the
Dell version of it, although they have 2003 drivers for the regular SB
Live! 5.1. And Dell doesn't care about it with Windows XP on a Dell
Dimension 4100. I haven't done a thorough search for the Dell specific
driver though.

 

[E]

E wrote:

It almost seems like two different problems, or like perhaps
a new driver was installed for the sound card, somewhere through
the period covered by the dumps.

I am reconsidering what you mention here and have been looking over the
debuging results. Although the system is up and running and back in the
owners posession, I'm starting to wonder if the Seagate Barracuda HD may
be starting to fail.

After reinstalling the OS, the HD seemed louder than it should be, but
then I'm not sure how it is supposed to sound. I was wondering if it was
actually up in DMA mode 5 when I was reinstalling applications and
navigating through directories on the disk. But the HD was indeed in DMA
mode 5. I never ran Seatools on the thing. As far as I could tell disk
throughput seemed fine. Application loaded as fast as one would would
expect.

Like I think you are trying to mention here, if emu10k1m.sys where
always at fault, then why is there a change in the debug output after a
certain date? Why are there complaints about,' "nt" was not found in the
image list ' in later dumpfile analysis?

Although quoted from here in reference to an
"UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP_M (1000007f)"...
http://www.osronline.com/DDKx/ddtools/bccodes_0ug7.htm

/quote
A double fault can occur when the kernel stack overflows. This can
happen if multiple drivers are attached to the same stack. For example,
two file system filter drivers can be attached to the same stack and
then the file system can recurse back in, overflowing the stack.
/end_quote

....other possible causes are also listed.

I'd try a test with Prime95, and see how long it will run error
free. I get bored after about four hours of that, so that is
probably enough error free testing, if you want to stop. If
you have a temperature measurement program like Speedfan, you can
watch the temperature while the test is running.

Sometimes, memory develops faulta, as time passes. I've had a
couple pieces of generic RAM bought on sale at local stores,
that lasted a little over a year. And then had a stuck fault
that memtest86+ could find. The replacement RAM from Crucial
has been fine to date.

You could also get a copy of CPUZ from www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
and check that the clocks used and memory timing values, make
sense for the hardware. That would be a basic check that
something was not fouled up, along the way, in the BIOS.
And you don't want to "clear" the BIOS, without understanding
what the hardware is doing at this moment - studying the system
as it now stands, may help you understand the root cause of the
problems.

BIOS is current, and I doubt there will be anymore revisions.

I think I'm going to go to her house and boot the system into a Seatools
disk and run the diagnostics on the HD, run memtest on system memory,
run Prime95 up in Windows, some type of 'burn-in' test and something to
test hard disk throughput, to compare it with HDs in the same class.
Wish I would have kept it another day or so.

 

[kony]

Paul wrote:

Like I think you are trying to mention here, if emu10k1m.sys where
always at fault, then why is there a change in the debug output after a
certain date? Why are there complaints about,' "nt" was not found in the
image list ' in later dumpfile analysis?

If you're talking about a longer period of time, there could
easily be random and infrequent, _ different_ bugs causing
errors. Windows is meant to make MS a ton of money, not to
be bullet proof.

 

[E]

I'm sure they made a best effort to make it so, but if it
was ok would they release newer versions?

I can't argue with that.

Nothing is identified yet, just don't be afraid to try a
newer driver. In general you should not use any drivers
that came with windows if you have a newer alternative.
That extends past the sound card to all other parts of the
system.

Yes, I new better when I first started working with PCs. This has been
my instinct in the past. I've been stuck on a hardware failure on this
system for some reason. Hopefully it doesn't still have one. (crossing
fingers)

It may not be the sound card, but if it were obvious at
first then there'd not be a problem, right? Trying a few
things is the remaining course.

I am starting to wonder if it is the only problem. I need to spend some
more time on the system. I'm wondering about the HD.

Yes, but that makes it at best as recent as what CL has to
offer and at worst, an older buggier driver. It isn't
exactly new now, 2004, let alone 2001 was eons ago in a
computer timeline.

I guess I trust MS on this to much.

This is no excuse for me not trying to install the latest Dell specific
driver by default (I'm a little buggy myself), but you would think
though, as common a piece of hardware as the SB Live! was, that MS, CL
and Dell would be in sync on this. And that at least CL, would have the
last stable driver ever written for the SB Live!, even for the Dell
version. After all, it is there card, and they apparently had Dell
specific drivers in the past, because it is in there little menu system.
But like so many other hardware venders, they all leave you to search
for it on places like driverguide.com . It only takes a little server
space, and with 300GB drives being so cheap and common place. Maybe they
are concerned over available bandwidth for legacy products. But I
thought we had a lot of that too. Sorry if I'm ranting.

How are Vista drivers for the SB Live! 5.1 I wonder? But then again, how
are Vista drivers for anything?

I'd almost be willing to bet that this Dell SB Live! would not cause
these type of problems in Linux. Maybe harder to get full functionality
out of the box, like MIDI support. But then I'm no Linux guru either.

Interestingly (I knew this long ago but forgot about it until getting
into the SB issue), there is independent WDM driver support for the SB
that may be worth looking into... http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/

Also this one... http://www.asio4all.com/

I wonder as to there stability.

Anyway, The SB Live! card is out of the system now. I've enabled the
onboard SoundMax hardware and installed its latest driver. I haven't
given up on it completely. I may do an extensive search for the latest
Dell specific driver, and download it if I can for the future. I think
its a good card overall.

I had wondered about that but didn't write anything because
my memory of the difference and which sound card model was
vague. I know at least one Dell card was seemingly named to
be the same model but didn't have some hardware support that
the retail card did, so it needed to do some soft processing
from a different driver - although it wouldn't have been
uncommon for CL to have just merged all the files for both
types of cards into one installer then the installer
identifies the card and installs the appropriate files for
it.

I knew at one point in the past, that it did need a slightly different
driver, but it was one of the many little things that got pushed back
into the recesses of my little brain.

It would be nice if they had merged it into one installer. But CL lists
the Dell SB 5.1 seperately, and seems to have taken any version of the
driver for it off there servers.

You might have some luck with a Google search like,
http://www.google.com/search?q=Live+5.1+Dell+driver
maybe throwing the word "XP" in as well.

2003 is an entire year, not a driver version number which is
what you'd need to compare them. Also there can be some
lag, when a driver is posted it may not be posted at both
the manufacturer's site and windows update simultaneously.

Like I said above. I assume to much I suppose, but a card as common as
this, one would think that there was some concistancy. But I think I
have noticed this phenomenon in the past, even with nVidia drivers. I
usualy try to get driver directly from the manufacturer. But I know, it
takes vigilance.

It feels like we've been missing some critical info here.
Why wouldn't a virus be a suspect? Just because AVG can't
find anything now isn't always telling, some of them mutate
and let's face it, the ultimate goal of the virus writer is
for their creation not to be detected unless they want it to
be so, and AVG is a pretty popular AV due to being free so
any savvy malware writer would check whether AVG can detect
their payload.

The blue screen problem has been occuring since I built the system, not
a daily occurance, maybe once every couple months, maybe a couple days
apart. I've always assumed there was a hardware problem (and there may
still be). When I made my original post, I had not even checked the AVG
test results.

I'm not suggesting it's probably a virus, could still be a
driver or something else.

The WinDbg application seems to point to a driver problem.

Better question now is how did they get onto the system as
this is a potential security hole (even if a user opening
email with attachments) that needs closed to ensure a secure
environment.

There are two people now that use this system, the owner, and her
boyfriend. I think his web browsing habits are behind the increase in
malware found in AVG logs, and seemingly in jest (or maybe with a hint
of seriousness), she suggested that malware brought on by his browsing
habits where the reason for the latest blue screen. I didn't take this
seriously at first because of the blue screen problems that predate
there aquaintance and subsequent relationship. Also, they have had a DSL
connection for a couple months now. This PC has only been connected by
dial-up for most of its history.

The broadband connection, and where he is taking IE, may be the reason
for the increase in malware. The system seemed to have a lot of up to
date software components that I did not install, like IE 7 and WM Player
11. So I think she had been manualy updating the system, or the system
has been updating itself. But I did not try to see how recent its patch
level was before I reinstalled Windows XP.

I don't think they are running any file sharing apps. I wish I would
have kept the AVG logs so I could give a closer look at directories
where the malware was being found. I do remember a few being found in
the Java cache. Also AVG seemed to think that the executable for the
Kodak Easy Share application installed on the system was a virus or that
it had been infected. Whatever the case, the icon for the Easy Share
..exe was missing, and Easy Share software would not run.

While at there place, setting the the system back up, I told him about
the number the viruses found by AVG and warned that some of the sites he
visits can be somewhat shady. And that you can expect these sites to try
to take over your browser and worse.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the XP firewall was turned on. They only
use webmail, so its not coming in through an email client like OE or
Incredimail. I'm thinking they are coming in through IE.

Yes, I've came across plenty of systems AVG couldn't clean,
some of the more aggressive viri will copy themselves
everywhere as fast as anything can find them, even have
separate threads just monitoring whether anything happened
to each (other) so if you or AVG gets rid of a file the
alternate thread just replaces it again. Real PITA to
clean, can take as much time as doing a clean install or
more, considering it's time spent at the keyboard instead of
letting the windows installer run unattended.

Yes, I have seen comparisons on the web between virus apps and AVG did
not always finish on top.

Quite a few systems with a fair amount of capacitance in the
PSU will momentarily dim the lights due to inrush current to
the caps. Not a big deal so long as the (household) wiring
isn't intermittent which would tend to effect more than just
the PC.

You haven't mentioned if windows was fully patched (or I
overlooked it), there might be something more fundamental
wrong with windows itself as we do know it's windows after
all, plenty of things that don't effect everyone slip
through the cracks.

I'm not sure if Windows was 100% up to date before I reinstalled. It is
now though.

The clean OS installation was probably the best start
towards a solution, but if it ends up bluescreening once
every month or some similarly infrequent period then just
explain that they need to try more to isolate what the
common variable is each time it does, isolating something
that is rare and intermittent is difficult enough on a
simple electro/electronic/mechanical system let alone a PC
running windows.

I plan to go back over there soon and boot up into Seatools to do diags
on the HD. Also run some benchmark and burn-in type of applications to
check for hardware failures. Also I will check AVG logs to see if
infections are getting in even though the system is patched as of this
writing.

Thanks
Eddie

 

[E]

Also AVG seemed to think that the executable for the

Kodak Easy Share application installed on the system was a virus or that
it had been infected. Whatever the case, the icon for the Easy Share
.exe was missing, and Easy Share software would not run.

Correction

I meant to say, that the Easy Share executable's file icon image file
was not present in the icon. The Easy Share executable had, for lack of
better terminology, a generic icon, as if Windows could not identify the
file type. The Easy Share executable was still where is was supposed to
be, in the Easy Share directory, but Easy Share would not run. Did
malware infect the Easy Share executable, which AVG detected and
stripped out?

 

[mr deo]

Correction

I meant to say, that the Easy Share executable's file icon image file
was not present in the icon. The Easy Share executable had, for lack of
better terminology, a generic icon, as if Windows could not identify the
file type. The Easy Share executable was still where is was supposed to
be, in the Easy Share directory, but Easy Share would not run. Did
malware infect the Easy Share executable, which AVG detected and
stripped out?

I am not going to say it wasnt a virus, or that a virus wasnt embedded in
some way..

But it's not uncommon for AV programs to detect valid software as
malware/virus
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=+site:forum.grisoft.cz+"kodak+easyshare"++avg+detect
Your not alone either ;P
It looks like a lot of "possible false positives" have been happing with
EasyShare and AGV since jan 08...
AGV removes some registry componets of EasyShare so it isnt going to run..