Blue Screen : Help

[jmv]

Hello all,

Hope someone here can provide some advice.

I have been running Windows XP2 on my mac for several days now.
However is does crash (blue screen) once or twice a day.
At some point I upgraded to SP3 but same crash behaviour (blue screen).
Every time it does crash I am doing something different.
Once it reboots it performs a chksdk (which is normal) but although Windows say I can interrupt the chkdsk I have found no key sequence to stop it (ESC, Ctrl-C etc.) The chkdsk takes forever, so I would like to interrupt it if I feel nothing much should be lost or in case I decide to run it manually from a Windows session.

I am unable to see what the Blue Screen reports since it goes directly into reboot. At one point I clicked on the dialog that was brought up after a reboot from Windows saying that it recovered from a serious error. That brought me to a microsoft WEB Page that mentions they suspect a driver may cause this. I have a eeling the NVIDIA graphics driver is crashing but no way to confirm.

Has anyone experienced this?
Is there a log file saved from the Blue Screen crash I may recover for someone to pin point the cause?

As a desperate alternative, I have another Windows XP2 Laptop than is running fine. Can I consider saving an image of this Windows and overwrite the one on the MAC? If so what tools could do that with the less pain?

Thank you all for your attention and help,
JM

 

[steveza]

That does sound like a driver issue. You could roll back you drive to the default that is installed by setup and see if you still get the blue screens.

If you go to the properties on "My Computer" (right-click -> Properties). On the Advanced Tab there is a button for Startup and Recovery (Settings). Clear the checkbox for "Automatically Restart". That should give you a chance to see the error message.

 

[Apple Ink]

Have you downloaded and installed BootCamp 2.1 update which is a min req to run XP SP3?

 

[velocityg4]

Moving an image from your Windows laptop to your Mac has a high chance of failure. However Microsoft does include Sysprep as a tool for IT administrators deploying custom Windows setups on a large array of computers. Follow the procedure carefully.

Microsoft Knowledgebase Article kb302577
In Depth Microsoft Technet Article on Deployment and Imaging

If you are getting multiple blue screens after only a few days and installed Windows from a Microsoft CD, installed all updates and no questionable programs. Then I would tend to agree with a faulty driver though it could be faulty hardware. I would run the hardware diagnostics CD that came with your Mac.

 

[pinktank]

I would do a fresh install, sounds like a bunch of driver flaws which is rather hard to pinpoint

 

[jmv]

Hello everyone,

I have read all your suggestions and this is what I have tried since my original post.
1-Action: Removed the Graphic driver and used just the plain Microsoft VGA support to see how it behaves.
Result: Blue screen dump afeter a couple of hours working. No evident action to pinpoint the cause.
2-Action: Upgraded to SP3 + Installed the Boot Camp upgrade for SP3
Result : Blue screen dump after about 8 hours of work
3-Actionerformed a hardware test using Himem.
Results: Several RAM memory errors detected.
Went to an Apple Certified shop to have the Memory checked and replaced.
All their hardware test passsed.
Conclusion: The Himem program I was using was bad/invalid.
No hardware faults detected.
4-Action: Re-installed the Graphic driver since the standard VGA was slow refreshing pages. Hope that I could work for a couple of hours.
Result: Better graphic handling.
5-Action: Run Mac boot diagnostics.
Result: All tests passed

Current situation: I get at least 1 Blue Screen a day for no obvious reason. One day I was on it for at least 10 hours until it happened.
Requires a chkdsk completion on 64G (32G+32G) everytime which takes long.

Not sure what to look for anyomore !

As for re-installing from scratch, I did go through that also prior to my original post. This 2nd XP install was freshly installed when I started to get the Blue Screen.

Any other ideas?

JM

 

[jmv]

Well I still get the blue screen error sometimes after running several hours
sometimes witihn a few hours.

I suspect the graphic driver (gut feeling).

I an using NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT version 6.14.11.7493

What Windows Graphic Driver are Mac Pro 17 users running?

Thanks for your replies.
JM