# [SOLVED] Random Vista Crashes



## alcho (Jun 19, 2008)

Hello,

I've been experiening random vista crashes for a few weeks now. Ive been trying to find the solution online but it seems the reasons and solutions for vista crashing are many. I was wondering if anyone could give me some support in stopping this extremely annoying problem.

Problem Summary: Today my computer crashed after around 3 hours from startup. Usually you can still move the mouse icon, however today not even that was working. You can still see the screen it does not go black, however all sounds stop and ctrl alt del does nothing. The only way to switch it off is by holding down the power off button. When I check the Event Viewer logs, nothing is logged at the period it crashes, and only returns an unexpexted shutdown at the time of logging back in. I can always tell when its about to crash because one of the windows will stop responding, then illl be able to move to another window, then ill only be able to move the mouse, then nothing.

Specs:

OS Vista 32-bit Home Premium

Dell Inspiron 1520
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A09
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5250 @ 1.50GHz (2 CPUs), ~1.5GHz
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page File: 1431MB used, 2898MB available

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor
Driver Name: nvd3dum.dll,nvwgf2um.dll
Driver Version: 7.15.0011.7597 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 6/9/2008 07:23:00, 5877760 bytes

Optiarc DVD+-RW AD-5560A ATA Device [CD-ROM drive]
ZY3032Y DEE100D SCSI CdRom Device [CD-ROM drive]
ST9160821AS [Hard drive] (160.04 GB) -- drive 0

Board: Dell Inc. 0KY768
Serial Number: .6FD8C3J.CN486437CE1635.
Bus Clock: 166 megahertz
BIOS: Dell Inc. A09 07/11/2008

Software:
McAfee Security Centre
SpyBot Remover including SD resident

Some of the solutions ive tried:

Error Checking (the C drive one) : found nothing

Defrag : Actually often crashes before I can complete one however is scheduled to run everyday at 12 midday. (Today the computer crashed at 11am).

Memory Diagnostic tool: found nothing

CCleaner: cleaned registry and all temp files etc

Virus scan with mcafee : found nothing

Spybot remover scan : found nothing

Updated Ndivia drivers, chipset drivers, windows update

If you need any more information just ask, id really like to get this fixed.

Thanks for your time,

-Aaron


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## cliffo88 (Jul 5, 2008)

*Re: Random Vista Crashes*

Hi, lengthy ongoing discussion going on here http://www.techsupportforum.com/mic...6341-new-build-random-vista-crashes-help.html about the same problem i'm having with my 64bit machine. 

Most people seem to be stumped by it.


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

*Re: Random Vista Crashes*

Hi. . .

As cliffo88 mentioned, his thread is involved in an ongoing discussion and the subject of mystery freezes and crashes.

One question that I have for you right now is where did these figures come from:

```
Page File: 1431MB used, 2898MB available
```
If that is the correct usage (in use vs. used) for the page file, that is large considering 2gb RAM. Is your page file system managed?

I'd like to get some system info from you to see what I can determine from the software side of this.

Please download the attached zip file and extract the lone batch file to your desktop. Go to your desktop, right-click on the batch file and select run as administrator. You will see the black "DOS" screen appear and scroll followed by the green status bar. It will take a few minutes to run. It will dump the system and app event logs, run msinfo32 and dxdiag. The output will be in a new folder found within your documents folder named TSF_Vista_Support.

Also, please click on the Live SysInternals AutoRuns link below in my sig area. Save it to desktop. Right-click on it - run as admin. Save it as an ARN file - you'll see the default ARN file extension when you save it.

Zip the contents of the new folder up (3 files) + the ARN file and attach to your next post.

Any ? - please let me know.

Regards. . .

jcgriff2


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## alcho (Jun 19, 2008)

*Re: Random Vista Crashes*

Hey, thanks for the replies,

Your post is interesting, I have also seen many other posts of the same type, with no found working solution. One solution however that may work for you is to set your power settings to "High Performance", however this did not work for me.

I contacted Dell and they made me run a number of hardware diagnostics, Ive also downloaded the NVidia nTune and have run the stability tests. However no problems have been found. I asked Dell if it could be an overheating problem and they are confident that it is a problem with the operating system and that any hardware problems would have arrisen in the diagnostics.

They have suggested to do a factory restore, I would preffer to only do that as a last resort. They have given me the number of their software department and so tomorrow ill be contacting them.

jcgriff2: Thanks for your reply. Ive attached the logs you have requested. As for the page file I believe that was taken from dxdiag earlier today. Also something that might interest you are these events from the event viewer which occured 20 minutes before the last crash:

The Desktop Window Manager is experiencing heavy resource contention. 
Scenario	:	The Desktop Window Manager responsiveness has degraded.

The Desktop Window Manager is experiencing heavy resource contention.
Reason	:	Graphics subsystem resources are over-utilized.
Diagnosis	:	A consistent degradation in frame rate for the Desktop Window Manager was observed over a period of time.

Now these might be due to me running some java3d applications that were eating up resources so im not sure about the link to the crashes.

If anyone else has any ideas let me know, if not ill post up what Dell say tomorrow.

-Aaron


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

*Re: Random Vista Crashes*

Hi Aaron. . .

Given the information in your post, I'd like a Vista System Health report in HTML format. Please do the following:
START | type cmd.exe into the start search box | right-click on cmd.exe | select Run as Administrator | the black cmd prompt (DOS) screen will appear - type the following:

```
[size=3]
perfmon /report

[/size]
```
It will take about a minute to run... then save it as an HTML file - you will see the default HTML file extension when you go to save it.

Please zip it up and attach to your next post. Thanks.

Regards. . .

JC

.


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## alcho (Jun 19, 2008)

*Re: Random Vista Crashes*

Hello,

Attached is the html file requested.

I have turned off pretty much every starting application in hope that its on of them causing the crashes. I have also been keeping an eye on the GPU temperature which is about 53C on idle and 57C running a graphics program.

I have heard that it may be multiple security systems conflicting, I have windows defender turned off anyway, however I do run spybots teatime resident and mcafees security siute. I have turned the teatimer off, only the mcaffee is running. If it crashes again I think ill try booting with mcafee turned off.

Ive also run HDTune, no harddrive problems found.

Ill keep you posted, so far 1 hour 10 minutes no crash, it usually crashes at around 3-4 hours.

-Aaron


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## alcho (Jun 19, 2008)

*Re: Random Vista Crashes*

Well so far 5 hours and 20 minutes no crash, I'm doing exactly what I was doing yesterday. Perhaps it was one of those applications I disabled from startup... Ive been keeping a hawks eye on both the temperatures and the event viewer, nothing out the ordinary seems to be happening.


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

*Re: Random Vista Crashes*

Hi. . .

Thank you for the perfom report.

I noticed that your McAfee loaded modules all have dates on the ranging from July 2007 - December 2007. These modules have been updated since then. Internet Security suites such as McAfee tend to cause app crashes because they can bloc local ports. I do not recommend the use of any firewall besides the Windows Firewall as I have seen to many wreak havoc in Vista systems. I would remove McAfee from your system using the McAfee Removal Tool - click on the McAfee RT link in my sig area, download it to your desktop, right-click on it and run as administrator. Re-boot afterwords. This product will have to be updated anyway, so I would remove it first to see if this is the cause of your app crashes.

Now reset the Windows Firewall to its default settings - 
START | type FirewallSettings.exe into the start search box | click on FirewallSettings.exe above | select the Advanced Tab | click on "Restore Defaults" | Click Apply (if hilighted) | Click OK

I found a few items in the Event Viewer logs - you mentioned the second one already. The 1st refers to VSS - system restore, although later restore points are created successfully. The 3rd and 4th refer to the CPU speed being limited by firmware - I am unfamiliar with this.

Regards. . .

jcgriff2

.


```
Event[63]:
  Log Name: Application
  Source: VSS
  Date: 2008-09-02T16:00:58.000
  Event ID: 8194
  Task: N/A
  Level: Error
  Opcode: Info
  Keyword: Classic
  User: N/A
  User Name: N/A
  Computer: Alcho
  Description: 
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error querying for the IVssWriterCallback interface.  hr = 0x80070005. This is often caused by incorrect security settings in either the writer or requestor process. 

Operation:
   Gathering Writer Data

Context:
   Writer Class Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
   Writer Name: System Writer
   Writer Instance ID: {a8796470-636a-4677-84f5-749d0b8d62bd}
```


```
Event[211]:
  Log Name: Application
  Source: Desktop Window Manager
  Date: 2008-09-01T16:59:14.000
  Event ID: 9004
  Task: N/A
  Level: Information
  Opcode: N/A
  Keyword: Classic
  User: N/A
  User Name: N/A
  Computer: Alcho
  Description: 
The Desktop Window Manager was unable to start because of an insufficient display mode color depth
```


```
Event[12]:
  Log Name: System
  Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Processor-Power
  Date: 2008-09-02T18:04:52.530
  Event ID: 7
  Task: N/A
  Level: Warning
  Opcode: Info
  Keyword: N/A
  User: S-1-5-18
  User Name: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
  Computer: Alcho
  Description: 
The speed of processor 1 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 16 seconds since the last report.

Event[13]:
  Log Name: System
  Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Processor-Power
  Date: 2008-09-02T18:04:52.530
  Event ID: 7
  Task: N/A
  Level: Warning
  Opcode: Info
  Keyword: N/A
  User: S-1-5-18
  User Name: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
  Computer: Alcho
  Description: 
The speed of processor 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 16 seconds since the last report.
```


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## alcho (Jun 19, 2008)

*Re: Random Vista Crashes*

Hi,

Sorry for the delay, I wanted to be sure it was fixed before I posted back. After removing some programs from startup the issue did not arise again. I agree with you that it was probably Mcafee conflicting with something. I have removed it from my system and am now using the windows firewall and defender.It hasnt crashed since! And I have put back some of my startup programs.Thanks alot, your support is very much appreciated.

-Aaron


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

*Re: Random Vista Crashes*

Hi there alcho. . .

Great news! 

I am glad my suggestions worked. Thanks you for submitting all of the items that I requested. It did help greatly.

Thank you for letting me know of the outcome - I appreciate it very much. 

It was prudent of you to wait for a few days to assure that the problem you were experiencing did not surface again.... that is exactly what I would have done.

Good Luck to you.

Regards. . .

jcgriff2

.


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## zimmputer (Nov 6, 2009)

I have the same problem...random crashes even when I am not using the computer and freezing so you have to hard reboot. I am running Vista Home Premium on a HP Touchsmart and am using Norton, not McAfee. ideas?


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