Need a bit of help with a BSOD

[sorcerer]

Got a Toshiba Satellite (don't know specific model because the label has been worn down) laptop in at the moment, running Windows 7 Home Premium. I replaced the hard drive in it about 9 months ago - currently got a WD Black 320GB SATA drive in it.

It goes through POST, gets to the Windows logo where the four colours come together and then BSOD - this happens in both normal and safe modes. The bug-check codes are:

0xF4
(0x0000000000000003)
(0xFFFFFA8003963800)
(0xFFFFF0800396AE0)
0xFFFFF80002F977B0)

Google says the 0xF4 could point to a hard drive issue but it passes WD Data Lifeguard and also GSmartControl diagnostics with no errors at all. While I'm referring to the hard drive I should also say that chkdsk found nothing wrong and neither did SFC, although I don't know how much faith I can put into those results. I have Nick's D7 (although probably only know how to use one percent of its capabilities) and was using that in 'Offline mode' to run those tests and, strangely, SFC said it would "take a while" but actually took less than three minutes; chkdsk took less than one minute (started 10.36.23, finished 10.37.15) - that can't be right can it?

Anyway, RAM has been taken out and re-seated then Memtest86+ ran overnight for almost 10 hours with no errors. I later found that substituting in a known good hard drive with Win 7 HP already installed works well, so can completely rule out other hardware such as motherboard and RAM being the cause.

A lot of hits from Google also point to bad or outdated drivers being the culprit and suggest running BlueScreenView to see what's going on, but when I connected the drive to my bench test machine (where it became the F: drive) and navigated to F:\Windows\Minidumps the folder was empty.

I'm due to go away on Saturday morning for a couple of weeks so I'm under pressure to get these jobs done and out, but because of that I'm panicking and not thinking straight. How can I find out if dodgy drivers are the problem and replace them if necessary? Is it better to tackle it with the drive back in the laptop or continue offline with it connected to my bench machine?

 

[lcoughey]

Did you make a full sector-by-sector clone of the hard drive? Should really be done before running any diagnostics on the drive or attempts to fix the file system. Perhaps to another laptop drive that you can insert into the system to see if you get the same symptoms.

 

[Bootman 650]

I know this is a really simple and probably worthless suggestion but have you tried a system restore?

 

[mr m]

I'm suspecting a bad hdd. I realize it passed diags but I've been burned before by bad hdd's.. You already swapped it and the system ran.

The minidumps folder might be empty because the debugging info might be set to none in startup and recovery.

I always keep a spare 2.5 and 3.5 on the shelf for times like these.

 

[sorcerer]

LCoughey - stupidly I didn't. I usually do, but forgot this time.

ChrisBoote - yes I did, but it made no difference.

Mr M - distinct possibility I suppose.

Thanks guys.

 

[Boston Pro Comp Serv LLC]

So a fresh Win 7 install on a known good HDD works correct? Than I'd try cloning the Orig HDD over to a known good HDD and see if that works. If it doesn't than you know your likely looking at drivers or some other Windows issue.

 

[AndyM]

In this case, it may be worth while booting from Last Known Good Configuration just for fun.

Andy

 

[sorcerer]

Boston Pro - yep, will do. Had that same thought after seeing the first batch of replies.

Andy - already done that but no joy.

Once again, thanks guys.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Are you certain that this unit is clean?

 

[sorcerer]

Are you certain that this unit is clean?

Good point, the answer to which is, no, I'm not certain.

I can now say that a full, sector-by-sector clone to a known good hard drive still fails to boot in exactly the same way and still gives the very same BSOD, so it's now either bad/corrupted drivers, malware, or some other Windows affliction - which brings me back to my original question; how to sort out bad drivers or other Windows afflictions if you can't boot the machine?

Currently doing a malware scan on the (cloned) drive with it attached to my bench machine. Can Hitman Pro scan drives when they're attached to the main machine like this?

Cheers all

 

[Markverhyden]

Put the cloned drive into the laptop. Build a Kaspersky Rescue disk, boot to that, update, and run a scan.

 

[sorcerer]

Put the cloned drive into the laptop. Build a Kaspersky Rescue disk, boot to that, update, and run a scan.

Cheers Mark, will do.

 

[ell]

Good point, the answer to which is, no, I'm not certain.

I can now say that a full, sector-by-sector clone to a known good hard drive still fails to boot in exactly the same way and still gives the very same BSOD, so it's now either bad/corrupted drivers, malware, or some other Windows affliction - which brings me back to my original question; how to sort out bad drivers or other Windows afflictions if you can't boot the machine?

Currently doing a malware scan on the (cloned) drive with it attached to my bench machine. Can Hitman Pro scan drives when they're attached to the main machine like this?

Cheers all

download windows defender offline and put it on a stick with the new definitions boot from it and scan. if its not clean proceed with more offline scans and test everything, wifi, sound, etc on a linux pe. Once clean if its still bsod since your pressed for time, image, backup everything and nuke and pave. My rule of thumb is if I know the hardware is fine and it works in linux offline, windows partition is marked active and fixed mbr, and safe mode is no go, its severe windows/virus/drivers corruption and nuke & pave is 90% the easiest solution.

 

[red12049]

Got a Toshiba Satellite (don't know specific model because the label has been worn down) laptop in at the moment, running Windows 7 Home Premium. I replaced the hard drive in it about 9 months ago - currently got a WD Black 320GB SATA drive in it.

It goes through POST, gets to the Windows logo where the four colours come together and then BSOD - this happens in both normal and safe modes. The bug-check codes are:

0xF4
(0x0000000000000003)
(0xFFFFFA8003963800)
(0xFFFFF0800396AE0)
0xFFFFF80002F977B0)

Google says the 0xF4 could point to a hard drive issue but it passes WD Data Lifeguard and also GSmartControl diagnostics with no errors at all. While I'm referring to the hard drive I should also say that chkdsk found nothing wrong and neither did SFC, although I don't know how much faith I can put into those results. I have Nick's D7 (although probably only know how to use one percent of its capabilities) and was using that in 'Offline mode' to run those tests and, strangely, SFC said it would "take a while" but actually took less than three minutes; chkdsk took less than one minute (started 10.36.23, finished 10.37.15) - that can't be right can it?

Anyway, RAM has been taken out and re-seated then Memtest86+ ran overnight for almost 10 hours with no errors. I later found that substituting in a known good hard drive with Win 7 HP already installed works well, so can completely rule out other hardware such as motherboard and RAM being the cause.

A lot of hits from Google also point to bad or outdated drivers being the culprit and suggest running BlueScreenView to see what's going on, but when I connected the drive to my bench test machine (where it became the F: drive) and navigated to F:\Windows\Minidumps the folder was empty.

I'm due to go away on Saturday morning for a couple of weeks so I'm under pressure to get these jobs done and out, but because of that I'm panicking and not thinking straight. How can I find out if dodgy drivers are the problem and replace them if necessary? Is it better to tackle it with the drive back in the laptop or continue offline with it connected to my bench machine?

I'm guessing that you ran chkdsk on the boot partition (usually 100Mb), not the Windows partition. Bet the Windows partition has a bunch of errors.

Rick

 

[sorcerer]

Right, I took Mark's advice and started running Kaspersky Rescue Disc at about 11.30pm last night before going to bed, thinking that I'd wake up to see the results of the finished scan - but after more than 7 hours already it's only 19% completed and will finish in 18 hours!

I've never used Kaspersky Rescue Disc before but have it set to scan 'disk boot sectors', 'hidden startup objects' and also 'C:' I'll let it run while I take my wife to work but I just can't afford to sit and do nothing with it for the next 18 hours so I think I'll have to abort it when I get back and try ell's suggestion of Windows Defender Offline and hope that that's much quicker.

Rick, I'll look at that and double check that it was/is the Windows partition.

Thanks again folks.

 

[HFultzjr]

I know this doesn't help now, but I've heard through the grapevine that Shane @ Tweaking.com is working on a way to possibly run his Windows All In One repair tool offline.

Not quite sure how he is going to pull that one off, but then again, I'm not sure how he does anything.


If he comes up with that......wow, that will rock.

 

[mikeroq]

When I run chkdsk I run it at least twice. Seems to do a better job. I try to run it until it doesn't say "Windows has made corrections to the file system" anymore.

Also have you checked out the crash dump? You can use BluescreenView or the WinDbg tool from microsoft.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Perhaps I missed it have you tried simply backing up the drive and reinstalling windows to confirm for certain its not something wrong with the drive. Don't get me wrong here I don't think its the actual drive.

Critical object terminating on boot as soon as you see the windows logo sounds like a driver issue to me. You could try switching it from ahci to ide using some offline registry tricks then setting it to IDE in bios and see if its an ahci drivers thing but for that particular bsod i can't say ive seen that before on an ahci driver issue.

 

[FremontPC]

You might also want to consider using Paragon (Acronis, Macrium) to do a backup and then hardware agnostic restore to your test drive. That should strip out the driver/hardware info and force Windows to rebuild it.

Failing that, (after you backup the drive) use your clean install, then slave the original drive and use Fab's autobackup to transfer files and settings to the new installation. Once you've got the system running reliably, then clone it back to the original drive and reinstall the customer's apps (or let him handle that).

 

[ac1]

Had a similar issue a while back on a Windows 7 Laptop, with similar symptoms and could not get into safe mode. Preferred not to do clean reinstall. After checking the hard drive, system restore and trying various things, I think I recall that it turned out to be a corrupted registry.
Sorry, Not sure if you have done this already but
might be worth checking to see if there are any recent reg backups