Area51: Win7 crashes

Windows 7 on Area51 keeps crashing when my son punishes the box with excessive CPU loads. Culprits include:

• Gary's Mod
• Saints Row
• GTA 4

You get the idea. Background tasks include Firefox running Youtube, Facebook, Yahoo, etc. Time to run the Basic Windows Troubleshooter!

Basic Windows Troubleshooter



Assess

First, can I find any information about what led to the crash?

• Reboot and log in as admin
• Review any crash data. See a sample report.
• Administrative Tools >  Event Viewer. Review Custom Views > Administrative Events, sorted by Date and Time.

Update

One of the easiest ways to stop crashes is to make sure everything is up to date, especially the OS and critical software.

Run Windows Update. Reboot as required to install all important updates.

Area51 Win7 Updates for 2011-06-22

Lots of updates today!

• Windows Update
• Flash
• Java
• MSIE 9

Windows Update fails: Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) installation error: 0x800F0A12

Resolution:

Click the Start button Picture of the Start button, and in the search box, type command prompt.

In the list of results, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.

Type bcdedit, and then press Enter.

Error reads "The boot configuration data store could not be opened. The system cannot find the file specified."

This error can occur if the system partition isn't being mounted, or made accessible to Windows during startup. To re-enable automatic mounting of all partitions and volumes, do the following:

type mountvol /E and press Enter.

Restart your computer, and try reinstalling SP1.

Let's see what happens.

Win7 Crash Data 2011-06-22

From July 22, 2011, on reboot:

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:    BlueScreen
  OS Version:    6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
  Locale ID:    1033

Additional information about the problem:
  BCCode:    116
  BCP1:    FFFFFA80072374E0
  BCP2:    FFFFF8800FFD7CF8
  BCP3:    0000000000000000
  BCP4:    0000000000000002
  OS Version:    6_1_7600
  Service Pack:    0_0
  Product:    256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
  C:\Windows\Minidump\062211-22152-01.dmp
  C:\Users\Neil\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-292673-0.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

Click [Check for solution]: that  process seems to have disappeared! No results, I guess. Let's look ourselves...

C:\Windows\Minidump\062211-22152-01.dmp

Looks like four (4) ".dmp" files were created in the last 4 days. The largest & oldest is 512 KB. Permission settings make it difficult to open, so I copied the file to the desktop. I open it in Notepad, and see

PAGEDU64 .... PAGEPAGEPAGEPAGEPAGE

and some non-ASCII characters. Nothing to see there.

The next file looks promising.

C:\Users\Neil\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-292673-0.sysdata.xml

The next file looks promising, but is not visible. Hidden? Nope, "Show hidden" is on. It's gone? I can't find it with either the MS or Google Desktop search. Gone, I guess.