Chasing a BSOD

I’m trying to nail down a repeated Blue Screen Of Death on one of my PCs. It’s only happened in the past week or so, on my 3ish year old HP a6760a desktop, in both Win7 32-bit (which I’m phasing-out) and 64-bit (which I’m moving to).

The crashes seem to happen in a couple of places, but this one is typical (output of the dump file via NirSoft Blue Screen View, with a little re-arranging of its HTML output):

Dump File 122912-22417-01.dmp
Crash Time 29/12/2012 9:15:14 AM
Bug Check String NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM
Bug Check Code 0x00000024
Parameter 1 00000000`001904fb
Parameter 2 fffff880`0a707068
Parameter 3 fffff880`0a7068c0
Parameter 4 fffff880`012ea820
Caused By Driver Ntfs.sys
Caused By Address Ntfs.sys+b7820
File Description  
Product Name  
Company  
File Version  
Processor x64
Crash Address ntoskrnl.exe+7efc0
Stack Address 1  
Stack Address 2  
Stack Address 3  
Computer Name  
Full Path C:\Windows\Minidump\122912-22417-01.dmp
Processors Count 2
Major Version 15
Minor Version 7601
Dump File Size 291,720

I’ve tried ensuring all patches were in place; that didn’t help.

Then I tried rolling back using System Restore to before it was happening. That didn’t help either.

Now I’ve tried installing the latest BIOS patch, which HP does say can help with some Win7 BSODs (though not specifically what I’m getting).

So far so good, will see what happens from here.

Update 1/1/2013: Still getting crashes. Interestingly, most (possibly all) seem to occur when Chrome is running, and particularly on pages with Flash. I have removed Flash, but it seems Chrome has built-in Flash support. So… I’ve temporarily removed Chrome to see if it stops happening. (It was up to date: Version 23.0.1271.97 m).

Update 1/1/2013 10pm: Not sure that helped. I did do a full malware check using MSE, which found: OpenCandy adware — it reckoned it was in D:\Users\Daniel\Downloads\avc-free.exe — which I think is a free “Any Video Converter” product I was mucking about with recently (I don’t think it’s the one I settled on). It’s not clear to me that OpenCandy would be causing these crashes, especially as I don’t think it was even active. Have removed it anyway.

Update 2/1/2013 8pm: Well, this is entertaining. Still getting crashes, and now it’s not booting at all. In fact it’s not even getting to the BIOS startup screen. Obviously some serious hardware problem.

Update 2/1/2013 9:15pm: After trying many suggestions from the HP support web site, such as unplugging all devices and even disconnecting hard drives and removing RAM, no luck. The power goes on, the CPU and video fans spin, but no display at all, not even the customary single beep.

I’ve posted to the HP forum hoping someone there has some ideas.

5 thoughts on “Chasing a BSOD

  1. Paul Trembath

    You’ve seen this similar issue (possibly even yours) on TechNet? https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproperf/thread/76b548e8-e6e0-4867-9098-cd26d34e3ae7

    – this points to an article on upgrading to Vista which includes some relevant steps for bugcheck 0x00000024 (which you may have tried, of course): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935806

    General description (if you need it) of bugcheck 0x00000024: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/hardware/ff557433(v=vs.85).aspx

  2. daniel Post author

    Thanks Paul.

    While KB 935806 is for Vista (I’m on Win7), it’s an interesting read, and I’ll go through it.

    0x00000024 certainly relates to problems with the disk, and a chkdsk found nothing. Perhaps it’s having problems with the dual boot (old was Win7-32, new is Win7-64).

    See updates above from 2/1/2013

  3. mpp

    So, it’s disk related and possibly hardware? I can’t comment on the specific error codes you’ve noted but I’ve seen similar behaviour before when my power supply was dying. It wasn’t supplying the correct voltage and either the motherboard shut it down or it crashed itself off.

  4. Josh

    Two different operating systems? That’s normally a dead giveaway that you’re dealing with a hardware problem. Three years old is old enough to have become clogged with gunk, and for components containing moving parts to be prone to failure. If the failure only occurs after being powered up for some time, then ensure cooling fans and fins are operating normally with no obvious obstructions. Remove, clean and reseat all appropriate connectors, e.g. memory sticks, disk cables, expansion cards. Otherwise, you can start guessing as to a cause – failing disk drive, or power supply – or wait until the failure actually happens, making it clear what the faulty component was. If you’ve got a known-good spare power supply lying around, it only takes a few minutes to swap out.

  5. Titel

    Hi Daniel, long time no talk 🙂 This sounds like a serious hardware issue, if the system won’t boot at all. Visually inspect your motherboard and possibly video card for any swollen capacitors. The electrolyte in them heats up and sometimes it leaks out or even pops one of the ends off. badcaps.net has a lot more detail on this.

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