This blog covers the rants, ponderings, considerations, experiences and life of Cameron Harris.

Sunday, 1 November 2009

Windows 7 Problems

Windows 7 has been hailed as a kind of Vista done right. So far my experience with it has been rather poor... worse than Vista, in fact. Today my hard drive failed. So I got it replaced and put my shiny new Windows 7 Pro disk in. After an unexpectedly long install of 45 minutes, I was up and running with Windows 7. The first thing that appeared when I logged in for the first time (before I had even clicked anything) was an error. Great start!

1 update failed to install Code 80070103: Windows Update encountered an unknown error

Okay well, I'll ignore that for now, bigger fish to fry. It was displaying my graphics (plugged in via HDMI) with low quality text and an under-scan black border, and it wasn't outputting sound. I got the latest drivers for my ATi card and rebooted. All working, sound playing. I adjusted my under-scan with the Catalyst Control Center and changed the colour profile to RGB Full. I set my interface size to medium as I'm using it on a TV, which is a nice additional feature, logged out/back in and now it was usable! Time to get onto the other problems..

Looked at the Windows Update again, saw that it was trying to install a couple week old ATI driver (that was what caused the error on first boot), so I unticked it and ran the rest of the updates... and my network stopped working. Windows Update had installed a 3 year old (!) NIC driver that apparently wasn't compatible with either Windows 7 or my hardware! I installed the correct NIC driver using USB pen, rebooted again. Okay, it all seemed to be working now.

I set it on installing some stuff and went to watch TV.... but I heard the system turn off a short while later. It had put itself to sleep. Annoying. I went to turn it back on and rather than turning on, it died. First BSOD! A new record, I think. I've only had Windows 7 installed for a few hours and it's cocked-up twice and crashed once. Not a great start, to be honest.


Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 2057

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 7a
BCP1: 0000000000000020
BCP2: FFFFFFFFC000009D
BCP3: FFFFFA8006333078
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1

2 comments:

vietknight said...

I have a similar problem!

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 7a
BCP1: 0000000000000020
BCP2: FFFFFFFFC000009D
BCP3: FFFFFA8006362078
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\032110-22588-01.dmp
C:\Users\VietKnight\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-31683-0.sysdata.xml

Read our privacy statement online:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=104288&clcid=0x0409

If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt


This always happens to me when I leave my comp idle and it goes to sleep.

Maybe we can compare what we have to see a common error or setup that might be the cause.

Cameron Harris said...

Sure!

My hardware is:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
ATI Radeon 4870 X2
Gigabyte S775 Intel X48
8GB (4X2GB) DDR3 1333MHZ 240PI