I'm getting an ominous blue screen with a large error message. It's happened 3 times now, last was within the last 15 mins. Anyone had this before or knows what it is? I couldn't screen dump it (at least I didn't think I could) so took a snap with my digi-cam earlier (2nd occurrence). It advises to check if a driver has been disabled in the stop message. Well the stop message is like a foreign language to me! Last time this happened I had just switched on the sound card after pressing play on some BBC News video content... as for changing anything in the BIOS this sounds scary. Any advice re fixing this would be appreciated!

PS What is dumping of memory about?

What windows are you using....have you done any system updates lately

have you tried system restore what is your system spec

Uninstall and reinstall the sound card driver would be my advise... 

Hey Reno. It's XP SP3. Good idea about the restore...completly forgot about that.

@ Michiel...Not a bad idea. I do have the driver pack. After MUCH searching (2 years!) I got the full ISO for my Soundblaster Extigy. Updates are easily findable but you need the initail driver pack for them to work! It's getting on a bit now (aren't we all) but is a nice quality one.

yea reinstall all drivers nak...they get corrupt....nvidia drivers are easy to install

For XP you could try this...maybe the fix was part of sp3. But it would not hurt to try..

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950616

Edit: but re-installing the original driver again is better I think.. 

Have you made any harware or driver changes recently?  This is known as the blue screen of death but it's fixable.  If you haven't made any changes recently then your RAM (memory? may be corrupt.  If your PC has more than one memory chip then try restarting with one taken out, if this doesn't do anything then try with another taken out etc.  If that doesn't work then sadly you'll have to explore the murky wold of forum fix sites.  But beware of sites claiming to give free downloads to fix, they don't.

have you ever considered trying to install a new OS on it?....i believe you can upgrade to windows 7 from XP...

@ AO...Hey there, thanks for this. Regards dodgy sites and downloads I agree, best avoided. I've made no changes to hardware, and no changes to drivers that I'm aware of. The only odd thing possibly related to the symptom in my first post is when I turn the sound card on after starting a video on YouTube, the video fast forwards, like visual search on a VCR! But it doesn't crash!

So...the RAM chips eh? Is that related to the dumping of memory part of the message? Thanks for sharing your knowledge on this!

@ Blaster...Originally Posted by Blaster:

Though I might do that when I get a new pooter after XP is no longer supported (1 yr from now).

Not sure I'd mess about with software until I was sure it's not hardware related.

AGREED! Start with a the hardware issues first. Try RR's idea first with a restore....then move to the bigger issues.

There seems to be a conflict somewhere.....

Have tried a system restore twice, no dice! I went back to early June then late May. Maybe go back further?

A whole new fresh Windows installation is the best solution.

Back up your files before doing it though ;3

the issue could be virus / spyware related just a thought....or can you get it in safe mode maybe work from options there?.... 

Hi Nak,

This usually due to hardware issues. Before you attempt to troubleshoot any hardware in your computer, first of all do a scandisk check on your hardisk to see if there are bad sectors.

i agree with Ken80s suggestion as well

This has to be the first time I have seen a post like this without any snide responses about the fact that you should've got a Mac...

Nak D, the evidence on that pic suggests your sound card drivers are knackered.

Is the sound card embedded into the motherboard or is it a separate card ? Either way, go into your control panel and to uninstall, remove the drivers for your soundcard. Try and replicate the problem with BSOD without any soundcard drivers.

To check your RAM do the following - open it up and take out the RAM from their slots. There are usually two levers, one at either end of the stick to help you lift it from the slot. Take a look at your motherboard manual to try and ascertain which of your ram slots is slot 1. If you have two ram sticks, put one into slot 1 and leave the other one out, try and replicate the BSOD. If you get the BSOD try and replace the ram stick with the other one, try and replicate BSOD again.

If you are indeed on WindowsXP goto http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950616 and install that hotfix from Microsoft. It updates the portcls.sys version.

UPDATE:

@ Docs...thanks for your advice here, would I have found this hotfix? Most likely not at all! I bow to your superior knowledge Sir! I've downloaded and installed the fix and re-booted. I've tried to get the system to fail by doing as previously described, all good so far. Thanks to all the others for their replies too, I appreciate your time and all of the comments.

all is good now winner !    

Curses, I knew there was something I was forgetting to mention

Done and dusted, clearly

On the bright side it's windows that's shut down, you can still access your harddrive via usb or windows CD boot.