reen message mentions a driver or library file, figure out what driver or application that file is part of and update or disable it.
- Update the system BIOS to the latest available revision.
- Uninstall any recently installed programs, and roll-back any recently installed drivers.
- Run diagnostics on the computer's memory.
This stop code means the system tried to access a nonexistent piece of memory, almost always due to:
- A driver trying to access a page of memory that is not present
- A system service (ex. virus scanner) failing in an exceptional way
- Faulty or incorrectly seated memory
- Corrupted data on the hard drive
Use the Windows Debugger to pinpoint the exact cause of these errors.
Things to check
- If the Blue Screen error mentions a driver or library file, figure out what driver or program the file is a part of and either upgrade to the latest version or uninstall the driver or program.
- If the error happens during the startup process, try booting to the Last Known Good Configuration.
- If the error started appearing after a program or driver was installed, uninstall that program or driver.
- Try running a full hard drive and memory diagnostic after reseating the memory and hard drive data cables.
This stop code indicates a driver tried to access a certain area of memory when it should not have, meaning there is a flaw in the driver itself. The goal of your troubleshooting is to find that driver and either disable or replace it. Use the Windows Debugger to troubleshoot this error.
Without the debugger, you are limited to uninstalling/updating/rolling back the driver that contains the driver file the Blue Screen mentions.
This Blue Screen error indicates that a device driver-almost always a video card driver-is stuck waiting for something (usually a hardware operation) to happen. Most of you have probably seen nv4_disp.sys
associated with this Blue Screen.
Things to check:
- Ensure the video drivers are updated to the latest Dell version.
- The system BIOS is fully up-to-date.
- If both the video driver and the system BIOS are fully up-to-date, check with the manufacturer for recent driver updates.
- As a last resort, try exchanging the video card.
Reinstalling Windows is not likely to prevent this error from reoccurring.
The Windows Debugger is one of the primary tools used by Microsoft software developers and support staff to analyze and resolve errors that result in memory dumps, and it's available for you.
The Windows Debugger is a powerful tool with many useful applications, but for this article, we are only interested in its ability to analyze memory dump files generated by blue screen errors to determine the cause of the error.
Before you can use the tool, keep in mind the following:
- The Windows Debugger is not a native Windows tool. You must download and install the application (15 MB) from the Microsoft web site. Administrator access is required to install the tool.
- The Debugger requires some minor customization before use.
- The Debugger can take anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes to fully analyze a memory dump.
To use the tool, follow these steps:
- Download and install the Windows Debugger from the Microsoft Web Site .
If you use Google to search for "windows debugger," the first link returned will be the Windows Debugger home page.
- Once installation completes click Start, click All Programs, click Debugging Tools for Windows, then click WinDbg to open the Windows Debugger.
- Configure the symbol path used by the debugger to turn addresses in the memory dump file into meaningful location names: expand the File menu, select Symbol File Path, type "SRV*c:\debug_symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols" in the dialog box then click OK.
- Open a minidump file: expand the File menu, select Open Crash Dump, select the desired dump file and click Open.
The system usually stores minidump files in either: C:\WINNT\Minidump\ or C:\Windows\Minidump\. The files will be named miniMMDDYY-NN.dmp, where MMis the month, DD is the day, and YY is the year in which the dump file was created. 