Dear Friends,
This may not be a Win 7 issue and if not I will gladly move it to the appropriate category, but my issue is blue screen freezes. I am running Win 7 and for the most part things run normally and all seems well. Then for no apparent reason the screen freezes on a blue back ground and becomes unresponsive. (I am leaving the computer on 24/7 so this can and does happen at any given time). No real damage occurs that I am aware of and I have been able to get back to normal by doing a orderly shutdown -- wait 5 min -- then reboot. This works 95% of the time but sometimes it goes back to the blue screen and I have to force a shutdown ----wait 10 min -----then reboot and usually we are back to normal.
Could this be a virus that AVG is not picking up? Possibly an outdated driver??????? Something in the BIOS??????? I am clueless but willing to try any suggestion to improve performance. Most appreciated.
Hey Soldat - So this is not the normal blue screen of death then?? You are not getting any messages or anything, just a blank blue screen....is that right?
Sorry, but I can't quite get exactly what is being displayed.....[quote:1bobsbmm]Then for no apparent reason the screen freezes on a blue back ground[/quote:1bobsbmm].
Does that mean you can still see all desktop items; shortcuts, taskbar, etc., and all that's happening is the background colour is changing to blue? What would be your normal background colour? Do you have a static background (wallpaper) or are you using Aero (changing background) or something else??
Sorry for all the questions but we need to get all that clear to help diagnose. It sounds very much like a memory (RAM) issue to me but will need more info.
Cheers......Jim
Oh, it's probably going to help too if you give us some details about your machine:
1) Approximate age
2) Type of processor (CPU)
3) Method for handling graphics; integrated or separate graphic card.
4) Amount of RAM.
To add to Jim's response...
If this is a computer you bought (HP, Dell, etc) let us know the model.
Usually, well about 90% of the time, this is a driver issue. About 3% of the time it's bad RAM, 3% a virus, and 3% a bad update.
I'm not a fan of AVG. In my opinion it has become more bloated through the years, as it's effectiveness has decreased. I would remove it and look at Eset if you want to go with a paid solution, or Microsoft Security Essentials if you want to go the free route.
[quote="DavesComputerTips":29gtou8l]...
I'm not a fan of AVG. In my opinion it has become more bloated through the years, as it's effectiveness has decreased. I would remove it and look at Eset if you want to go with a paid solution, or Microsoft Security Essentials if you want to go the free route.[/quote:29gtou8l]
No intention to derail this thread, just my two cents, as I have no personal experience with either of the two AVs mentioned by Dave.
The latest AVG (v9) seems to be doing better.
The paid Emsisoft's Anti-Malware is very effective, but requires quite a bit of memory & cpu power.
What do you like better in MSE over other free AVs?
See ya.
I am human
Hey FD - We are getting a tad off track, but.......
AVG has gone downhill since version 7, it just ain't what is used to be. Components have been dropped from the free version and it is resource hungry. Plus it rates lowest of all free AV's in detection rate tests .
MSE has been receiving very favourable comments from reviewers and users alike. The well respected Fred Langa recently tested MSE over a 4 month period and has subsequently written about it in glowing terms. It has good detection rates plus it is very simple and easy to work with, and it is light on resources too.
I believe the top 3 free AV's at the moment, in no particular order, would be Avast, AntiVir and MSE; Avast appeals to a wide variety of users. AntiVir seems to be most popular among the geeks. MSE would certainly be a very good choice, especially so for less experienced users.
I am running Avast on a Vista system and MSE on Windows 7, both are doing a great job and I couldn't really pick between them.
Cheers....Jim
Since there were multiple responses --- I will try to answer all questions in this reply.
1. Yes - what I have here is a blank blue screen. No icons, messages, nothing -----totally blank.
2. Machine age - 3 years
3. Type processor-AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core processor 5600+
4. Graphics card - NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT
5. Amount of RAM - 3 GB.
6. Computer Model - HP Pavilion GX614AA- ABA a6330f
7. Last but not least --------thank you for the suggestion to look at MSE instead of AVG version 9.
8. OS --- running Win 7 home edition.
The first thing I would do is get the latest video driver...
[url=http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-32bit-258.96-whql-driver.html:dljkhekc]Latest 32bit Nvidia driver[/url:dljkhekc]
[url=http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-258.96-whql-driver.html:dljkhekc]Latest 64bit Nvidia driver[/url:dljkhekc]
Download and install the appropriate driver and let us know what happens.
Have downloaded and installed the latest 64 bit video driver. Will run this as a test for a week and see if that was the solution. Will report back on what happens.
Glad to hear it. Let us know how it works!
I have run my system continuously since the last report and I am happy to say I have not had any blue screen freezes or forced restarts. Thank you one and all for your assistance and support. The upgrading of video drivers seemed to be the key to success.
Very glad to hear it, Soldat, and thank you for updating us!
Blue Screen Freezes, or BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) can have many causes. It's basically Windows' way of saving itself from a potentially damaging situation. The blue screen can be deciphered if you know how.
If you added any new hardware or software products just before the computer started acting up (including windows updates) you might want to remove them and see if it handles the problem. If it does, you know where to look for more information.
If that doesn't help probably your best bet is to read this for a bit of an education:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 50081.aspx
Note the error message your bsod is displaying. Contact your hardware vendor or their forum with that information and possibly a copy of your screen dump. This is a small file normally created by Windows after a BSOD error. It often shows which driver, or hardware item, etc. actually caused the BSOD. The file can be located in c:windowsminidump. It is not readable for you and really should be interpreted by an expert.
My HP computer suddenly started BSODing about two weeks ago. It began when I checked in to a hotel room with wired Ethernet. I sent the minidump to HP and they were able to determine that it was the Ethernet driver. I deleted the driver, installed a new one and voila! Problem handled.
Good luck.
GL
Funny enough when I read the original message it was there all by itself with no posted replies so I figured I'd help out. I was a bit surprised when I posted my reply to see that there was a whole chain of earlier answers. Must be some quirk in the forum software. Anyway, glad he solved the problem. GL
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