Where are all these BSOD's coming from??

[ostarbuck]

I bought my X40 in november and I am wondering what to do about its unfriendly behavior. Blue screens are my X40's favorite way to crash, but it also sometimes crashes to a black screen, or just decides to restart itself for the fun of it while I am working. When it is in the mood to crash, it crashes 5-10 times in a day, and sometimes I can't even get it to start (I'll push the power button and the lights will go on, but the screen stays black and nothing happens, or it starts to boot up and then crashes). It can't seem to go more than 2-3 days (of maybe 6-8 hours use per day) without crashing. It does not seem to matter what software I am running, nor does it matter what devices (if any) are connected to it. I don't think it is a virus, I have hardware and software firewalls and plenty of up to date virus/spyware/adware checkers, all of which give me a completely clean bill of health. I tried writing down the blue screen messages for a while but I saw absolutely no pattern at all, they were all completely different. I hesitate to take it in to IBM since I have seen no pattern at all to this behavior and I have no idea how to reproduce it or verify that the problem is "fixed." However it is really becoming a big problem. Any suggestions??

[CoolRunnings]

Sure. Keep a log of what the blue screens say. You can turn off the automatic restart feature to see the whole message by right-clicking My Computer, choosing Properties, going to the Advanced tab, and clicking the bottom button... from there, uncheck the automatic restart option. Once you have about 5 different stop codes, post them here or PM me with them. Also, test the memory using a tool like memtest86 (www.memtest86.com).

[beerak]

I bought my X40 in november and I am wondering what to do about its unfriendly behavior. Blue screens are my X40's favorite way to crash, but it also sometimes crashes to a black screen, or just decides to restart itself for the fun of it while I am working. When it is in the mood to crash, it crashes 5-10 times in a day, and sometimes I can't even get it to start (I'll push the power button and the lights will go on, but the screen stays black and nothing happens, or it starts to boot up and then crashes). It can't seem to go more than 2-3 days (of maybe 6-8 hours use per day) without crashing. It does not seem to matter what software I am running, nor does it matter what devices (if any) are connected to it. I don't think it is a virus, I have hardware and software firewalls and plenty of up to date virus/spyware/adware checkers, all of which give me a completely clean bill of health. I tried writing down the blue screen messages for a while but I saw absolutely no pattern at all, they were all completely different. I hesitate to take it in to IBM since I have seen no pattern at all to this behavior and I have no idea how to reproduce it or verify that the problem is "fixed." However it is really becoming a big problem. Any suggestions??

In my case it was Symantec Norton comming preinstalled on x40

I uninstalled it and blue screens went away.

Later the following programs caused BOSD on my sweetheart:

- GSM PCMCIA Driver (update resolved)
- Internet Speed program (uninstall solved)
- PC Anywhere (10.5 version, uninstall solved)

It could be also RAM malfunction, the second most common reason after drivers and programs.

[ostarbuck]

Uninstalling Norton was one of the first things I did when I got my x40, so it can't be that...

I just tried running memtest86 and found 0 errors in two passes. So I guess it isn't that either.

What information on the blue screen should I be logging? When I was writing them down before, I wrote down the name of the error at the top of the screen, and if there wasn't a name I wrote down the stop code. Here are the first five blue screen messages I wrote down

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

STOP: 0x00000050

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

BAD_POOL_CALLER

STOP: 0x0000008E

How many of them do I need to collect before the information is useful? I've never noticed any pattern in the messages... each one is different.

[egibbs]

This site http://aumha.org/win5/kbestop.htm is useful for troubleshooting errors, along with the MS Knowledge base.

The errors you are getting seem to be pointing to either bad hardware or a bad driver. Does the X31 have a mini-PCI card? You could try pulling that. Also, memtest passing is not necessarily meaningful as the problem may be quite intermittent. If you have any added RAM you should try pulling that as well.

The real way to do this is to download the windows debugger from the Microsoft site - search the KB for instructions on how to do that and run it. Every time the machine crashes it should write a .dmp memory dump file. If you feed that to the debugger it will show you the exact state of the machine at the instant the crash occured - including the last instruction executed and the memory location being referenced when it blew up.

The output requires a bit of skill to read, but you can see what modules were loaded in memory and what memory spaces they occupied. If you take the memory location of the last instruction and see which module's memory space it was in, you will know which module blew up. From there you google the name of the module, and try to find out which driver it is part of. That should give you some good clues to the hardware or driver at fault.

If you find that it really is random - different modules every time - then I'd begin to strongly suspect bad memory. Note that it could also be bad L2 cache on the CPU itself, or bad video RAM.

Good luck - BSODs are a [censored] to fix, but with enough work it can be done. Something is wrong - you just need to find it.

Ed Gibbs

[ostarbuck]

No added RAM, all it has in it is one stick of 512MB RAM, soldered to the motherboard I believe (It is an X40 model 2386-H4G)

Is video RAM something that would be on a graphics card? The X40 doesn't have a graphics card so that wouldn't be it...

It has a mini-PCI card for wireless. It wouldn't help me much to pull that out, nor could I really test to see if the problem recurs without it, since the laptop would be useless to me without the wireless (I need to be connected and I only have wireless networks available). Is there any way to test the card without removing it?

[egibbs]

Is there any way to test the card without removing it?

Not really if it's an intermittent. Best way is to pull it for a few days and see if the problem goes away. But if that's not an option you could try reseating it, and also the memory stick if it is not soldered in (not sure about the X40 architecture - on most Thinkpads the RAM is all socketed).

Other than that, you will need to do it the hard way - analyze the memory dumps and see what is happening to cause the BSODs. If it's still under warranty you could EZ-Serv it, but more likely than not they'll just restore the factory settings, run it for 30 minutes, and if it doesn't fail send it back. Unless you can find something that causes it to BSOD every time repeatably EZ-Serv won't be much help.

The clues are there in the dumps - it's just going to take some work to dig them out.

Ed Gibbs

[beerak]

Uninstalling Norton was one of the first things I did when I got my x40, so it can't be that...

I just tried running memtest86 and found 0 errors in two passes. So I guess it isn't that either.

What information on the blue screen should I be logging? When I was writing them down before, I wrote down the name of the error at the top of the screen, and if there wasn't a name I wrote down the stop code. Here are the first five blue screen messages I wrote down

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

STOP: 0x00000050

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

BAD_POOL_CALLER

STOP: 0x0000008E

How many of them do I need to collect before the information is useful? I've never noticed any pattern in the messages... each one is different.

Do you use Cable/ADSL modem plugin with USB ?

[ostarbuck]

Do you use Cable/ADSL modem plugin with USB ?

I only use wireless.

[beerak]

Do you use Cable/ADSL modem plugin with USB ?

I only use wireless.

Hmm, time for more infomation.

Make task dump and past it here so we can check what services are running.
Also write here all drivers you've reinstalled.

[ostarbuck]

Never reinstalled any drivers -- I've only had my X40 for a little over two months. As for services, there is really nothing unusual at all: besides Outpost firewall and AVG anti-virus, it just has the standard XP and X40 services that it came with... Most of the time the only program I am running is Firefox, since I can't trust this machine for doing any real work . Anyway, if it's in the mood for crashing, it's just as likely to crash while booting up, before it even gets to the stage of starting services, which makes me doubtful it's a software problem...?

[sugo]

Which version of Outpost are you running? It's a shot in the dark but I would put Outpost as a high ranked suspect.

[ostarbuck]

The latest released version, 2.5

[sugo]

I ran into various BSODs with other windows firewalls. Quite a few of them are actually registered as windows drivers. Most drivers are loaded before services.

Outpost 2.1 has been running fine here for a few months though.

[ostarbuck]

Well, for the last couple of days I switched from Outpost to the default XP firewall, and it did not change the BSOD behavior one way or the other.

[egibbs]

I'm not familiar with Outpost, but in general firewalls load a lot of low level stuff early in the boot process so they can get their tentacles inserted in the TCP/IP stack. Just disabling Outpost may not stop it from loading it's low level components - it may have made more or less permanent changes to the TCP/IP startup process.

Actually uninstalling Outpost may put things back the way they were, or it may not depending on how well the uninstall routine is written. You may need to recover the machine to the factory install if that is possible. If it still does it after a clean recovery (without installing anything else) I'd call EZ-Serv - it's almost certainly hardware. If not, then it is probably something you've loaded on.

I agree that Outpost is a likely culprit, just because firewalls are so intrusive by their nature and that can lead to problems. But without more info about the actual state of the machine when it crashes we are all just shooting in the dark. The way to solve this is to determine which instruction is coming up crapper and why, what module it belongs to, and what software put that module on the machine.

Ed Gibbs

[thinkpad_2004]

As a person who suffered many BSODs with Thinkpads and the exact same error message as you, I must say that it is the RAM.

I used Crucial memory in my T42 and my X40 and I got the same error messages (the IRQL less than etc.). I worked days with MS and Crucial and IBM to no avail. Popped out the Crucial memory and bought some genuine IBM.

BUT, since you haven't added RAM to your notebook, it sounds like your ram chips may be bad. It happens.

[ostarbuck]

Well, now the darn thing doesn't even boot. The fan and battery light turn on, but nothing else happens... screen stays black. The same nothing also happens when I try to boot from the rescue recovery CD. I must say I'm pretty disappointed in my first thinkpad!