Recently reloaded windows 7 on this laptop on a new HD. Having periodic bluescreen crashes.

Always happens when I am away form the computer. Sometimes it will have rebooted, others it will be frozen with a blank screen and have be powered off and on. Got the follow "detailed explanation from windows, but it means nothing to me.

Any ideas? The laptop is a Dell XPS 15 3 or 4 years old. Time to start planning on a new machine? Use it for business, so don't really want it to go down unexpectedly, and end of the year seems to be a good time to buy.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 4a
BCP1: 0000000077C1132A
BCP2: 0000000000000002
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: FFFFF8800AF2CCA0
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\102314-24367-01.dmp
C:\Users\Absolute Inspections\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-128732-0.sysdata.xml

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TIA

Check your RAM, it's likely a bad stick of RAM.

Yeah ditto. In my experience almost all blue screens are caused by bad RAM or a bad hard drive controller.

How do you "check" RAM? I updated and maxed out the RAM right after getting the laptop.

Maybe related, Windows has given me a message about the driver for the SD card reader needing updating. Not sure why, since I use it daily and it works fine. Could that contribute?

quote:

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How do you "check" RAM? I updated and maxed out the RAM right after getting the laptop.

Maybe related, Windows has given me a message about the driver for the SD card reader needing updating. Not sure why, since I use it daily and it works fine. Could that contribute?

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Take one out and boot up. If you still get the error, take the next one out and put the other one in.
If it boots fine while a stick is out, that's your bad Ram.

The issue is pretty intermittent. Doesn't happen upon boot up.

My bad, I skipped over that part, try this.


http://www.cnet.com/how-to/test-your-ram-with-windows-memory-diagnostic-tool/

quote:

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Step 1: Open the Start Menu and type in mdsched.exe, then press enter.

Step 2. A pop-up will appear on your screen, asking how you'd like to go about checking the memory. The first option will restart your machine and check the memory right now, and the second option checks the next time you choose to reboot. Pick the option that best suits your needs.

Step 3: Your computer will load a screen that shows the progress of the check and number of passes it will run on the memory. Watch the memory diagnostic tool for errors. If there are no errors, then it's likely that your RAM is not causing any issues, and it's time to investigate other hardware or software issues.

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Thanks. I will give that a try tonight.

Your best bet is to remove a stick and let it run for a while. I had a RAM issue that passed the tests above. It wasn't that the RAM was bad, it was just incompatible. Since you've had the RAM installed for a while, it's likely that the stick is bad, not incompatible.

And yes, a bad driver can also causes crashes. Try updating that next.

Passed the ram test. Will work on the driver. Having trouble finding where it is.

Passed the ram test. Will work on the driver. Having trouble finding where it is.

Played with driver updates through Dell this morning. Think I found the SD reader one. Will see if the problem reappears.

Thanks for the assistance.

Spent some time updating drivers. Seems there should be a better system for this. Will see if it helps.

If it's after you leave it on for a while, maybe it's when your computer tries to hibernate or the screensaver?

Could reduce the time on when it occurs to test it.

Random, but might be something to check

Good idea. I will try that. Since it did it again overnight last night. Guess all the driver updating I tried to do did not help.