Blue Screen Crash

If that generic driver is related to the OS how come it didn't automatically fix it when I did the DISM?

You could list them of course, however I'm not really "hardware-savy", I'm more of a software-oriented guy. From what I've seen, that specific driver and BSODs error could be attributed to hardware. Misconnection, hardware that moved during the transport, etc. However, troubleshooting hardware directly like that isn't my speciality and I doubt I would be the right person to assist you. I would prefer if we can wait for a Moderator or a better helper (that knows hardware) to jump in this thread to assist you.

To address your question, this driver was the one who made Windows crash (BSOD), but it wasn't entirely it's fault. It was most likely treating a query from another program, driver, etc. which made it crash. The driver that failed is this one, but it doesn't mean that it's the one who caused it to crash.

Edited by Aura., 23 December 2014 - 11:35 PM.

You could list them of course, however I'm not really "hardware-savy", I'm more of a software-oriented guy. From what I've seen, that specific driver and BSODs error could be attributed to hardware. Misconnection, hardware that moved during the transport, etc. However, troubleshooting hardware directly like that isn't my speciality and I doubt I would be the right person to assist you. I would prefer if we can wait for a Moderator or a better helper (that knows hardware) to jump in this thread to assist you.

To address your question, this driver was the one who made Windows crash (BSOD), but it wasn't entirely it's fault. It was most likely treating a query from another program, driver, etc. which made it crash. The driver that failed is this one, but it doesn't mean that it's the one who caused it to crash.

 

and there is no way to track down further which driver is or program this one was treating? Like we can't further track it down?

Personally I cannot, it's out of my domain of expertise. I could try to check on other BSOD threads how the helpers do it however, to see if its within my capabilities.

Thanks. It would be great if we could get some help on this...

 

I took the advise of Tom's Hardware's tutorial and ran slimclearner and slimdriver....Pcmag and Cnet seem to rate it really high...The slimdriver gave me a whole bunch of drivers that are outdated...mostly related to my chipset. Why wouldn't my computer tell me that? how can I make sure all the drivers are up to date?

I'll explain you how it works under Windows when it comes to drivers, other people might disagree with me, but over the time, I've experienced with so many drivers related issues and these programs that it becames an obvious big no in my head. Think of drivers as "middleman" between the hardware and the software. They are what the software use to communicate with the hardware and vice-versa. When you update your your drivers (except for the GPU ones), you do not really increase their performance at all. You cannot boost an hardware component level over the level it has been conceived on (when you overclock a CPU or a GPU, or even your RAM, the capabilities of overclocking are present on the hardware, just not enabled), so even if you update your drivers, you won't get any real "boost" of performance on your system. When a driver update is released, it's mainly to address a bug or an issue in the precedent driver version. If you didn't encounter a single issue with your current drivers, then you have no need to update them to their latest version. This is because the bug present on these drivers might only affect a certain brand of computer, laptop, when it works with a specific software, service, I/O interaction, etc. In other words, I could relate it to a pretty common expression "Why change it (or upgrade it) if it still works perfectly fine?". Then comes what we call the "Driver Updaters". You'll notice that under Windows, and many other OS, a lot of people create software that tries to tell you that you "need" something. You need something more that you don't have. And this is exactly the case of Driver Updater software. They try to tell you that if you keep all your drivers up to date, your system will run faster and always be performant. And if you understood my explanation above, you'll see that it's not true, hence this is "false advertising". The goal of these software are to make you download them, since they are either paid by the download they have, or they bundle other applications and programs in their installers (which we call foistware). The author of the program is paid by these foistware maker to include their program in his program installer. Therefore, you end up installing one product that contained 3 or 4 others and just "bloated" down your system. Also, most of them will ask you to "pay" in order to unlock more benefits or better updates, which is totally false. Drivers updates are totally free from your hardware manufacturer website or your computer/laptop manufacturer website. And this brings anothing point, we don't know where these programs downloads their drivers from. Are they really downloading the drivers they say they download and install? Are they really downloading them from the manufacturer's website? Who knows. There's been some tests that have been done by other reputable websites, like HowToGeek, who tested these Driver Update programs. On a fresh installation of Windows, with the most updated drivers from the manufacturer, the program would report that tons of drivers were outdated and needed to be updated. How is it possible? It's not, it's just inventing that in order to push you to use the software and ultimately buy it. In a whole, you could say these software as a big scam. The same goes for "PC Boosters", "PC Optimizers", "Registry Cleaners" (which are dangerous to use by the way), etc. It looks like I have a total hate of these programs and I'll be honest, I do. But I'm not hating for no reason on them, I'm hating on them because I know them, I know how they "work", I know that they don't work like they say and overall, I know that they cause way more issues than they solve.

Well, that was a long rant, excuse me

wait, so -even CC cleaner is junk? That program I thought was super reliable. I also use ADWCLEANER off this site to clean the registry and junk. Both programs have fixed a lot of stuff for me.

 

BTW, its been a little bit now and no more crashes. I also re ran SFC  scan and still no issues.  Could that recent crash just of been a result of the fixes we made and the restart was all it needed?  Maybe I should play a video game to see if more problems happen. That way it will narrow it down a little if it's hardware. Not a bad way to trouble shoot. ha.

No, CCleaner is mostly a temporary files and folders cleaner, so it's all good to use, the same as TFC (Temp File Cleaner) hosted here. But do not use the Registry Cleaner feature in it. There's only a few programs like this that are actually legitimate, but it's because they aren't centered about "PC TuneUp" or "PC Boosting", but more about "System Management", which you can do manually at one point if you know what you're doing. Also, AdwCleaner isn't really a "Registry Cleaner", it's an Antimalware tool that aims for junkwares, PUPs, adwares and browser hijackers. The only registry entries it cleans are the ones that are malicious and therefore should be deleted. Not the ones that points to invalid references or are left by uninstalled programs. BSODs are very random, when you get them in a big time lapse. Think of BSODs as the one in a million probability a person gets infected with a very rare sickness and ends up in the hospital because of it, or any other situations like that. These are what BSODs are. However, if you get BSODs frequently, and that they are of the same type, caused by the same drivers, etc. it's most likely because there's something that is indeed not working properly on your system.

So you can confirm there is something going on with my system but you aren't sure?

Now I am getting new crashes...One is said something about KMODE....and now "Reference_By_Pointer" This is getting really frustrating, and I could really use help. If you are stumped by this, I am beginning to really think I made a mistake switching back to PC.

Can you follow dc3's instructions here and post in your next reply everything that is asked in it?

Can you follow dc3's instructions here and post in your next reply everything that is asked in it?

 

The programs you told me to download here were a problem. They installed a whole bunch of PUPS and web browsers, etc etc. I had to remove them all with ADW and Malwarebytes.

 

Anyway, I updated my bios, and the BSODS seemed to of gone away. It's been about 6 hours of straight usage and none so far. Hopefully that is the end of it...it makes sense though because the errors were super random but seemed to relate to some sort of driver issue.

I doubt MiniToolBox installed PUPs and Browser Hijackers, since it comes directly from BleepingComputer download sections and you download the executable as a whole, not an installer. I downloaded MiniToolBox over a hundred time from here, and so did hundreds of people I told to do so and it never installed anything else. It's a stand-alone executable, not a program. I just noticed that the links he gives for Speccy is from FileHippo. Which could have indeed installed PUPs and Browser Hijackers. I'll download it in a VM and check. So I just installed Speccy on my VM, the only program it tries to bundle with the installer is CCleaner which is a known and reputed program from Piriform (the ones behind Speccy) and that is actually suggested to install and use to help you clean your temporary files and folders. So you either downloaded these programs from other sources than the ones linked by dc3 or you had these PUPs and Browser Hijackers prior to downloading MiniToolBox and Speccy.

Edited by Aura., 25 December 2014 - 12:26 PM.

I am not sure which link I clicked, but the second I installed it, some weather app popped up, my browser started displaying ads as my home page, and etc. I did not have that already. I am not that noobish.

I can confirm you that these download links are totally safe to use and contains no bundled applications whatsoever, except for Speccy that had CCleaner but it's obvious and you can refuse it. Plus CCleaner is a legitimate application that comes from the same developpers behind Speccy and it doesn't bundle anything else too.