Tag Archives: “Blue Screen of Death”

ATI / AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta Driver

ATI / AMD have recently released Catalyst 12.6 Beta Driver Suite

You can download it here http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst126beta.aspx

Resolved issue highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 12.6 Beta:

•AMD Radeon™ HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Tri-CrossFire™ configurations + Eyefinity BSOD when launching a DirectX application.

•AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Eyefinity/Multiple Display configurations BSOD when using desktop applications.

•AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 cards hang when system goes to sleep.

•Tearing on Eyefinity configurations when different display connector types are used.

•Poor Elder Scrolls: Skyrim CrossFire scaling seen in AMD Catalyst 12.4 (back to CrossFire scaling found in AMD Catalyst 12.3).

•AMD Catalyst Control Center – intermittently missing Overdrive page.

•AMD Catalyst Control Center – missing GPU Activity gauge.

•AMD Radeon HD 7900 CrossFire Configuration – system hang after cinematic in Call of Duty: Black Ops.

•Crysis 2 -random system hangs when run in DirectX 9 mode.

•Heroes and Generals: Blocky corruption in scenes with smoke effects when run in DirectX 11 mode.

•Disabled HDMI audio when the connected HDTV is powered Off/On.

Feature highlights of the AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta:

Dual Graphics enhancements – new application profiles

Supported Dual Graphics configurations:

AMD Accelerated Processors for Desktop PCs

◦AMD Radeon HD 7660D (A10-5700)

◦AMD Radeon HD 7560D (A8-5500

Notebooks with AMD Accelerated Processors

◦AMD Radeon HD 7660D (A10-4600)

◦AMD Radeon HD 7640G (A8-4500M)

◦AMD Radeon HD 7520G (A6-4400M)

• New profiles have been added for the following game titles:

◦Diablo 3

◦Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

◦StarCraft 2

◦Portal 2

◦Call of Duty Modern Warfare

◦Call of Duty Black Ops

Future Catalyst releases will continue to add Dual Graphics support for additional titles

Applicable Products:

This article applies to the following configuration(s):

Hardware:

•AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series

•AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series

•AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series

•AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series

•AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series

Troubleshoot a Blue Screen of Death BSOD or Crash Dump on a Microsoft Windows Operating System

It’s probably the thing we all dread most, evereything has been working great for weeks/months/years and then suddenly your machine starts randomly crashing to a Blue Screen of Death or BSOD

All is not lost though as Windows will often generate its own crash dump a report of what happened to cause the crash, this is often invaluable when it comes to finding the cause and fixing it.

A company called Nirsoft offer a great little utility called Blue Screen View, you can download it from here ttp://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

This program will automatically analyse the default Mini Dump and Crash Dump locations and then pull back a summary of the driver or system file that was most likley the cause of your crash.  In many cases it’s then just a simple case of removing the offending software, updating/downgrading the device driver or installing a software patch/hotfix.

Windows will not boot with a Stop Error 0x0000007B

A very common BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) is a STOP error 0x0000007B and may indicate either a hardware, software or driver issue.

Please see the great troubleshooting guide put together by Tim Fisher on about.com

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/stop0x0000007b.htm

One thing that Tim does not mention is that sometimes it is necessary to slipstream the AHCI SATA Controller Drivers into your Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation media.  This can easily be done by downloading and using nLite to slipstream drivers and updates into your Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 CD Media, you can get the application from http://www.nliteos.com/

Common AHCI Sata Drivers include:

Intel – http://downloadcenter.intel.com (Look under Chipset, Chipset Software and then Intel Rapid Storage Technology.  You will need the F6 Drivers for either x86 or x64 depending on you using 32bit or 64bit windows)

Nvidia – http://www.nvidia.co.uk/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-uk or http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

AMD/ATI – http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/AMDSupportHub.aspx

Windows Kernel Power Event ID 41 Error

Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 may restart unexpectedly, you may get a brief glimpse of a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) and then find yourself back at the Windows login prompt.  When you inspect the Windows Event Log you will find the following event logged

Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power
Event ID: 41
Level: Critical
Description:
The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

The additional info under the event is important because the various bug check codes can indicate different causes.

EventData
BugcheckCode          0
BugcheckParameter1    0x0
BugcheckParameter2    0x0
BugcheckParameter3    0x0
BugcheckParameter4    0x0

Having faced this error recently it eventually turned out that the problem was due to incompatible memory (not faulty memory).  The batch of machines in question were all branded but due to an error with the manufacturers memory compatability matrix had been supplied with the wrong additional memory modules.  When we reverted the machines to the standard 2GB module that was already installed they operated perfectly, we eventually arranged for the additional modules to be swapped and that was the end of the issue.

An important thing to remember is that a memory checker will not show that your memory is faulty if it just incompatible with your particular system or mainboard.

Your system or mainboard manufacturers support should be able to confirm memory compatability and advise on the correct upgrade/type for your system