System Crash When Visting Hotmail

[Bryce W]

This one is bugging the hell out of me. I have a clients system here that crashes when reading hotmail emails.

The system originally had a damaged CPU and motherboard due to overheating which was replaced.
However, one it was running I found that XP was damaged. So I did a repair install and everything worked fine. The client visited Hotmail and the system crashed. I did some repairs to Internet Explorer without luck and decided to do a complete format.

I did a complete format and reinstall. All drivers were loaded and the system was stable. It could remain on for hours, surf the net but as soon as it looked at a hotmail email, it would crash. It does the exact same thing under Firefox too so it isnt an IE issue.

When it "crashes" the screen goes blank, the screen drops its resolution to 800x600 and all you can see is a mouse cursor which is frozen.

Im suspecting a video card driver problem. I tried to get an updated driver for the video card (which is onboard the mobo) but the driver that the site says is for this motherboard doesnt work (as in wrong driver).

The mobo is a MSI PM8M-V.

I also suspected that the advertising on hotmail was killing it so I installed Flash and Shockwave... didnt fix.

Anyone else have any ideas?

[greggh]

Just asking the stupid question because sometimes it needs to be asked, did you go to the correct place for the drivers and update the bios to the latest one as well?

http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=proddesc&prod_no=205&maincat_no=1

Thats the correct place to get the latest drivers and bios for that motherboard.

If you get their Live Update Online from the Utility tab it should update any drivers and the bios automatically.

On a funny note, check this out:
http://www.msicomputer.com/support/TechSupport.asp
Notice "Latest Montherboard BIOS Download"
Whats a montherboard? :)

[thecoldone06]

Is there anything in the event viewer about the crash?

[tkrabec]

What information is in the system logs about the crash? how about the crash dump/mini dump files?

-- Tim

[greggh]

tkrabec is correct, if there are minidump files you should use windbg to diagnose the problem.

for anyone that doesnt know how to use windbg here is a VERY BASIC primer:

1. Install Debugging Tools for Windows 32-bit Version From:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/installx86.mspx
(if you need 64bit version its here: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/install64bit.mspx)

2. Run WinDBG and set the debugger symbol path as follows (from the file menu), substituting your downstream store path for DownstreamStore.
SRV*DownstreamStore*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

For example, to download symbols to c:\websymbols, you would add the following to your symbol path:
SRV*c:\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

3. In WinDBG go to the File -> Open Crash Dump menu item. Open up the dmp file you want to analyze. Dmp files are either named memory.dmp in your windows directory, or are one of the files in the windows\minidump directory.

4. Wait for it to load the dump then at the prompt type: !analyze -v

5. It should tell you the driver that caused the blue screen.

[Bryce W]

Thanks greggh, that was a big help. Turns out it was win32k.sys which in most cases is either bad ram or a bad installation. I just tested the RAM with Memtest, ran it for 30 minutes with 40 fails and 2 passes... Id say that RAM is screwed.

Its weird that the system ran beautifully otherwise. It was stable, I could surf to many sites, click around, do whatever and it was fine, only when it went to hotmail would it die. Weird... Anyway, time to replace the RAM.

Thanks again guys, this place has become a great resource for me.

[greggh]

Great to see you tracked it down. The minidump files are really a big help.

[iladelf]

Bryce, let's say the memory would have tested OK. Would you have performed a repair install of XP next, or a clean install?

Just wondering for future reference.

[Bryce W]

Bryce, let's say the memory would have tested OK. Would you have performed a repair install of XP next, or a clean install?

Just wondering for future reference.
I probably would have looked elsewhere first. The system already had a repair install on it, then a fresh install because the OS wouldnt boot after the hardware replacement. If I couldnt find anything else I probably would have considered it a bad windows installation and tried again.