OT: Device Driver Errors

Captain Kwok · #1 March 29th, 2004, 03:39 AM

Greetings!

I'm running WinXP Pro on a Pentium 4 2.4Ghz data machine with 512Mb of RAM and plenty of HD space.

I've been having random reboots (2-3 daily) due to a device driver error for the Last 8 months. I'm really quite tired of it!

Of course, WinXP can never reveal which driver it is, just that I've had a crash due to a device driver error.

I've kept all the drivers for my video card (ATI Radeon 9000 64Mb) and sound card (sound card, AC-97 C-media) updated as much as possible.

The drivers for the sound card are not digitally signed for XP, and there was one time it actually reported a device driver error as caused by the sound driver - but only ever once.

There are no showing conflicts in my device manager or stuff of that sort.

Is there any way that I can determine which is my problem driver? Can it be another device? I do have a DVD and CD-RW drives as well.

Please help!

Ed Kolis · #2 March 29th, 2004, 03:48 AM

Uninstall them one by one until the problem goes away?

Atrocities · #3 March 29th, 2004, 03:55 AM

You get one or two free tech support calls to Microsoft. If not, tell them the problem occured after the Last update and you need there help to figure it out. They might wave the cost.

Good luck, and please keep us informed.

Electrum · #4 March 29th, 2004, 04:01 AM

2 things

1/ go to your control panel. Under administrative tools you to event viewer. This is a log of error Messages. Look for big red "X's.

2/ Go to control panel / system / Advanced tab. Under Startup and recovery, go into settings. Under system failure, un-check the automaticly restart box. It should stop thr rebooting, though not the problem. It sould give you a cahance to see what the problem is.

Captain Kwok · #5 March 30th, 2004, 02:51 AM

I'd already disabled the automatic restart - but that system event viewer was kind of interesting. But I've been unable to correlate the error reports with any of the devices.

I ran a scan and identified 9 digitally unsigned drivers and researched each one. 1 belongs to the motherboard, 2 to c-dilla (software protection copyright stuff, but not present from the beginning), 1 from the dvd, 1 for safedisc launcher (another copy protection thing), 2 from my Norton a/v, and 1 from my soundcard.

I'm going to see if I can find some updated signed drivers...I know already for some of them I won't be able to though.

Electrum · #6 March 29th, 2004, 03:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Captain Kwok:
I'd already disabled the automatic restart - but that system event viewer was kind of interesting. But I've been unable to correlate the error reports with any of the devices.

I ran a scan and identified 9 digitally unsigned drivers and researched each one. 1 belongs to the motherboard, 2 to c-dilla (software protection copyright stuff, but not present from the beginning), 1 from the dvd, 1 for safedisc launcher (another copy protection thing), 2 from my Norton a/v, and 1 from my soundcard.

I'm going to see if I can find some updated signed drivers...I know already for some of them I won't be able to though.

You for the Motherboard drivers first. also check if there is an updated BIOS. I would quess your problems there. If not, I would try disabling (or removing, if you can) the Norton. Most AV programs are very intrusive, but it seems NAV is more than others. It will work fine for many, but, sometimes.....
It would be helpful if I knew the specific equipment you computer has (MB, CPU, etc.)
How long have you had XP Pro installed?
Do you do a lot of adding/ removing of software?
Have you run any anti spyware programs lately (Spybot, Ad-aware)? sometimes a little program in the background wreaks havoc.