Another BSOD issue..

Hi,

From day-one with my HP Pavilion dv9700 laptop Vista (32) has been crashing. At first it was when I would disconnect from the internet, and thought it was a dialing issue (my DSL provider supplies a poor dialer and even worse support), so I setup the VPN connection to go straight from windows with the appropriate settings, and that worked, but it didn't stop the blue screens. Then it started happening when I would use any online communication software with video streaming - Skype, Gmail Video chat. Now it just happens randomly, and I've noticed that when I leave my computer connected to the net overnight I wake up the next morning and it's usually sitting with a BSOD.

I ran a memory check that came back clean. I've attached 2 of a huge list of minidumps (I'm not kidding, I cleaned them up a few months back, and I've already got like 20 more). I was hoping somebody would be helpful enough to debug them. I'm a programmer, but have little experience with this side of windows, although my hunch is a faulty driver, although I couldnt tell you which one. Stab in the not-so-dark, it's the Realtek network driver - from the internet symptoms, but don't hold me to it.

In addition, it is probably worthwhile mentioning that as far as I know I have the most up to date versions of all relevant drivers, i recently flashed my bios. im open to alternate suggestions, but as far as other-things-to-do go, I think I've pretty much done them all. Now I'm just frustrated and impatient and growing less and less fond of windows.

Thanks in advance

The two crashes are both in the network stack and relatively complex, but they are not identical. Minidumps don't really offer enough for meaningful "debugging" (padded-out kernel dumps are necessary), but I'd suggest you start off with identifying which of these drivers may be network-related and either update or remove as appropriate:

start end module name
8b06c000 8b07b000 rimmptsk Sat Feb 24 16:42:21 2007 (45DFD03D)
8b07b000 8b08f000 rimsptsk Tue Jan 23 18:40:19 2007 (45B5BBE3)
8b08f000 8b0e0000 rixdptsk Thu Mar 22 00:02:02 2007 (46012CCA)

Ricoh drivers for a printer?

8b158000 8b18e000 aq3g0vio Thu Dec 04 05:18:18 2008 (4936CD6A)
8b40b000 8b794000 NETw5v32 Tue Nov 18 02:40:18 2008 (49219062)
8b794000 8b7ba000 Rtlh86 Fri Mar 06 20:06:03 2009 (49B0E77B)

Realtek and Intel NIC drivers?

8b7f2000 8b7f3c00 HpqRemHid Thu Jul 12 01:30:21 2007 (4694F78D)
8b7fb000 8b7ff180 HpqKbFiltr Tue Jun 19 08:12:03 2007 (46770333)

Unneccessaryware that came preinstalled?

8cbe6000 8cbfd000 aswMonFlt Thu Feb 05 13:40:40 2009 (498A51A8)
8ee06000 8efe5d00 RTKVHDA Tue Oct 09 19:49:53 2007 (470B40B1)
8f1b0000 8f1ba2c0 aswTdi Fri Feb 06 08:06:19 2009 (498B54CB)
8f1bb000 8f1beb20 aswRdr Fri Feb 06 08:06:09 2009 (498B54C1)
8fc01000 8fc23280 ATSwpDrv Wed Aug 29 05:47:32 2007 (46D47BD4)
8fc45000 8fc66000 aswSP Thu Feb 05 13:41:01 2009 (498A51BD)
8fdf4000 8fdfc000 aswFsBlk Thu Feb 05 13:40:50 2009 (498A51B2)

ASW* = your anti-virus? Do these crashes still occur with the AV completely uninstalled as a test?

97130000 9717c000 ATMFD unavailable (00000000)
9d86d000 9d87de80 adfs Fri Aug 15 00:57:15 2008 (48A447CB)

An ATM network adapter? Really? Or am I reading too much into the driver name?

thanks buddy. ive tried to take care of my realtek driver, hope it helps. if not, you'll be sure to hear about it although i suppose ill try to uninstall my anti virus if this doesnt work, you said that was possibly related, right?

and as far as i know my laptop has no ATM functionality. pity, im sure buggy ATM software when exploited appropriately can be lucrative!

davin said:

thanks buddy. ive tried to take care of my realtek driver, hope it helps. if not, you'll be sure to hear about it although i suppose ill try to uninstall my anti virus if this doesnt work, you said that was possibly related, right?

Click to expand...

I don't know whether it's definitively the cause, but your AV software includes TDI filter drivers which certainly have the potential to corrupt network stack data and thereby result in this crash pattern. Since the crash is apparently relatively simple to repro, if updating the NIC driver(s) doesn't do the trick I'd be tempted to see whether completely uninstalling the AV makes any difference.

davin said:

and as far as i know my laptop has no ATM functionality. pity, im sure buggy ATM software when exploited appropriately can be lucrative!

Click to expand...

ATM as in Async Transfer Mode (a sophisticated type of network infrastructure), not as in Automated Teller Machine

well, as promised, im back. i took care of my network card driver and the crashes seemed to stop, but they started up again a week ago. ive attached some new dump files - with the new drivers things might look different.

as before i was running simple internet apps, nothing strange or exotic in the slightest.

Did you actually end up un-installing your A/V?

The two culprits are TDX.sys and ndiswan.sys, both still connected to network issues.

These are all Verifier Enabled Minidumps - have you run Driver Verifier in the past? If so, go back in and tell it to "Delete Existing Settings" - and see if the crashes grow less frequent.

Here's a brief description of the STOP 0x7f error: Troubleshooting Windows STOP Messages

Additionally, they are all "Double Faults" which are:

• 0x00000008, or Double Fault, indicates that an exception occurs during a call to the handler for a prior exception. Typically, the two exceptions are handled serially. However, there are several exceptions that cannot be handled serially, and in this situation the processor signals a double fault. There are two common causes of a double fault:
  • A kernel stack overflow. This overflow occurs when a guard page is hit, and the kernel tries to push a trap frame. Because there is no stack left, a stack overflow results, causing the double fault. If you think this overview has occurred, use !thread to determine the stack limits, and then use kb (Display Stack Backtrace) with a large parameter (for example, kb 100) to display the full stack.
  • A hardware problem.

Click to expand...

So, there could be a hardware issue, or a software issue.
The software issue that I'd suspect most with a double trap is malware. I'd check over in the Security forums for assistance with that: System Security - Vista Forums

The hardware issue would most likely be a problem with your NIC/WLAN card - does this occur both on the wired and the wireless connection? Can you connect directly to the modem (with a new cable if you're using another one)? Does this still give the BSOD's? Does wiggling the connections cause BSOD's?