Windows 7 BSOD when playing games

[Jessica]

I never get the bluescreen doing anything but playing games and it's not often but it happens about twice a week. It crashes and WhoCrashed or Bluescreen view always points to ntoskrnl.exe or ntkrnlmp.exe or hal.dll it's always two of those 3. Other than games it runs fine. I did all the memory tests for 3 days and tried the best I could re-seat stuff. It's an alienware so they have it all secured in a way that makes it difficult to get around, and the case weighs around 105 lbs or something crazy.here's the minidump file:

 

[Jessica]

Hopefully someone can help here. I didn't experience any bluescreens since the post, but they will happen again, it's every other day it seems. I did more virus scans since my post, but nothing is ever found. Other than that, still awaiting help.

 

[Jessica]

attached a msinfo32 to this (original post), still waiting on any help. I can't seem to find a way to solve it.

 

[Jessica]

Still waiting for any help...

 

[Elmer]

Hi Jessica and Welcome to The Forum.

To get you started these old drivers from Silicon Image need updating:

SI3132.sys Wed Oct 03 19:39:29 2007
SiRemFil.sys Wed Jun 20 20:42:10 2007 Link Removed
SiWinAcc.sys Fri Jun 15 01:02:02 2007

The crash occurred when DCGAME.EXE was running. I believe this is DC Universe Online Windows Client from Sony Online Entertainment. It may well be worth checking that that also is up to date.

Also. Please see: Link Removed Following Method 2:
Download and run the SF Diagnostics Tool. Right click the SF Diag tool and select Run as Administrator before running. When the reports have been created, zip them up and attach to a post.

Download and run CPU-Z. Take screenshots**/snips of the CPU tab, Mainboard tab, Memory tab and all the slot #'s under the SPD tab.
Go to Post Reply, click on the Go Advanced button and attach the screenshots**/snips to your post for all the RAM experts to see by using the paper clip you will find on the top toolbar. Do not zip them up.
**If screenshots, please crop.

Also see: Link Removed

When attaching dmp files, PLEASE put them in a single zipped folder​

 

[Jessica]

Hey thanks for the reply! The part about updating those drivers, I am unsure which ones to download. I'm on the page but the names are not exact.

 

[Elmer]

Hey thanks for the reply! The part about updating those drivers, I am unsure which ones to download. I'm on the page but the names are not exact.

In the Select a product, select SiI3132 PCI Express (1x) to 2 Port SATA300. Underneath shows: SATALink PCI Express to 2-Port Serial ATA II Host Controller. In Step2 select Driver. In step 3 select Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit / Windows 2008 R2 64-bit.

Chose the right drivers for your system!!

Sadly the newest drivers are still an outdated 2008, but at least they are (only just!!) newer.

Driver Install - Manual Method

1. Download the driver and extract it to a folder.
2. Open the Device Manager.
3. Right click the device you wish to change the drivers for. You can select Properties > Driver > Driver Details to check you have the right device.
4. Choose Update Driver Software.
5. Select Browse My Computer For Driver Software.
6. Select Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.
7. Select Have disk...
8. Select Browse..
9. Navigate to the extracted folder and double click on the .inf file
10. Hit OK, then Next and the driver(s) will then begin to install.
11. After it has installed, GoTo C:\Windows\System32\Drivers. Locate the driver you've just updated, right click it and check the dates under its properties.

Also, don't forget to run the SF Diagnostic Tool etc. to gather info.

 

[Jessica]

Sorry for the late reply, I had family issues sadly...

I'm tryign to get back to this now. Over the week I had used the computer on and off there was no issues, but I didn't play any games. Then yesterday the bluescreen again.

I'm unsure which of the sata drivers to download though:

this: * SiI 3132 64-bit Windows SATARAID5 Driver for Windows 7

or this:* SiI 3132 64-bit Windows BASE Driver for Windows 7


In the alienware driver document it says:
Installed Devices Drivers
Link Removed

• Generic volume shadow copy, 6-21-2006, 6.1.7600.16385
• Microsoft Streaming Tee/Sink-to-Sink Converter, 6-21-2006, 6.1.7600.16385
• NVIDIA High Definition Audio, 1-28-2010, 1.0.9.1
• Texas Instruments 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller, 6-21-2006, 6.1.7600.16565
• Broadcom NetLink (TM) Gigabit Ethernet 2, 10-16-2009, 12.4.0.3
• Generic volume shadow copy, 6-21-2006, 6.1.7600.16385
• Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU X 980 @ 3.33GHz, 6-21-2006, 6.1.7600.16385
• Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU X 980 @ 3.33GHz, 6-21-2006, 6.1.7600.16385
• Silicon Image SiI 3132 SATALink Controller, 6-24-2009, 1.0.15.6 <------

The diagnostic tool is downloading some pdf reader that tries to install some weird toolbar stuff. So I didn't do it. Hopefully I backed out in time. Ah it's hard these days to do this stuff with all these weird add-ons wanting to be installed.

 

[nmsuk]

This is the driver Link Removed

 

[Jessica]

I took a screenshot of the bsod, this time it had a usb ports error in bluescreen view, but the screenshot might help:

Link Removed

I have no idea how to update some of this stuff. It comes in folders that are 32,64, dos... nothing makes sense to me sadly. I'm wondering if all these bluescreens were a result of this usb issue and if it just finally caught it, since the initial problem never seemed to get resolved. I don't have any strange devices or anything hook to my usb ports, just a mouse and keyboard. It does seem to happen only when I play games but for a year or more I never had any issues, and I am very careful, and then one day this started happening.

As for the other driver the two techs kindly helped me with, i downloaded it and it had a setup and I ran that, then I went into device manager and checked that way and it claims it's updated so hopefully it is. That was actually after the shot above.Link Removed

 

[Jessica]

If anyone can help with this at all, please let me know. (see my very last post)

 

[nmsuk]

Have you tried updating your motherboard and usb drivers at all?

 

[Jessica]

Have you tried updating your motherboard and usb drivers at all?

I don't know which exact drivers to update for the usb and unless the other update was the motherboard, then no idea. I'm really bad with those drivers. I do fine with stuff like nvidia drivers since it's all done for you. If I could find out which ones exactly to update I could do it. Hopefully that would fix things.

the one usb drivers i did find there was several separate folders in the zip. custom, amd, 32, 64. I really don't understand which one to install or even if that was the correct drivers.

 

[nmsuk]

I'll need to know what motherboard etc to find the correct drivers. Get cpu-z and take screen grabs of each tab please.

 

[Jessica]

Thank you for helping me, here is the screenshot of all the tabs.


Link Removed

 

[nmsuk]

You can get all the drivers from Link Removed - Invalid URL Inclusing an updated bios which may well help.

 

[Jessica]

Well I updated everything and it seemed fine. The computer restarted in a game after those 3 days went by from my last post, and when it rebooted I got the start windows in safemode or normal, and no error when I reached desktop. Also bluescreen view and who crashed showed nothing as causing the computer to reboot. Nothing new in the minidump folder either. I wonder if it's some other driver. It's like the updates half fixed the problem at least as of the time I write this message.

I thought about this alot and the only time I started seeing crashes was back when I installed iTunes. I removed iTunes though, as their site instructs, but i notice when I use driverfinder, it sees I need to update my iTunes drivers. I have nothing in any search on my system called iTunes though. I notice the crash happens in games when I load areas or press E on my keyboard (common key in two games) to teleport from one area to the next. Then again like I said, I haven't seen the crash for 3 days now since and this time it wasn't a bluescreen but a reboot.

 

[Jessica]

Well I updated everything and it seemed fine. The computer restarted in a game after those 3 days went by from my last post, and when it rebooted I got the start windows in safemode or normal, and no error when I reached desktop. Also bluescreen view and who crashed showed nothing as causing the computer to reboot. Nothing new in the minidump folder either. I wonder if it's some other driver. It's like the updates half fixed the problem at least as of the time I write this message.

I thought about this alot and the only time I started seeing crashes was back when I installed iTunes. I removed iTunes though, as their site instructs, but i notice when I use driverfinder, it sees I need to update my iTunes drivers. I have nothing in any search on my system called iTunes though. I notice the crash happens in games when I load areas or press E on my keyboard (common key in two games) to teleport from one area to the next. Then again like I said, I haven't seen the crash for 3 days now since and this time it wasn't a bluescreen but a reboot.

now a full week of no bluescreens but it's back again. I wish I could figure it out. I saw the broadcom drivers or something could be updated but the download gives several folders (off the dell site) no idea which one to install. I hate computers.

 

[nmsuk]

now a full week of no bluescreens but it's back again. I wish I could figure it out. I saw the broadcom drivers or something could be updated but the download gives several folders (off the dell site) no idea which one to install. I hate computers.

Any chance of a pic of the folders, so I can try and help you.

 

[Jessica]

Any chance of a pic of the folders, so I can try and help you.

Well, the error I get with the bluescreen is still according to bluescreen view and who crashed:

usbhub.sys and ntoskrnl.exe

It only happens every so often, sometimes a week can go by and some nights I might play a game for 7 or 8 hours straight and I don't see any problems. Performance has always been fine. I often wonder if it's a sound driver issue too. I'm not sure. When I research these errors I see so many different things. Also I noticed AMD Dual Core Optimizer installed on my system through Batman:Arkham City around the time I started getting the bluescreens, so I removed that yesterday, and still waiting on the crash to happen again, thuogh I hope it does not.

As for the folder, the Dell site didn't show any drivers for it (because I installed them), but driver finder showed one entry (see screenshot) and I have Windows 7 Ultimate, but there is a Win32 folder as well as Win64 and custom folder... not sure what that custome folder means. The main folder itself, you can see has a setup.exe, but in the Win64 folder there are several types of exes. That folder is also labelled bluetooth, which I already installed from the dell drivers, right before this driverfinder scan (though I don't use bluetooth, and don't even want it.) It's all very confusing.

The other two things are explained in the screenshot, with text. Hopefully you can read it.

Link Removed