Nickelodeon causes BSODs

Kids PC' HP Pavilion 6370Z 128 Mb RAM Pent II w/ XP Pro & NIS 2002 updated. Unlimited dial up internet. Mostly used (and abused) for cd and online games. Slow as molasses, but stable.

5 BSODs yesterday...IRQ not less than equal... Got online and ran Spybot and AdAware- they deleted a few things, nothing serious. Ran CW Shredder, nothing found. I can surf to Google, Symantec, etc, but the second I click on, or type in Nickjr, or any link pertaining to Nickelodeon- Wham. BSOD. Hard boot. "Your computer has recovered from a serious error, would you like to tell MS?" No- Duh, I'm not online anymore... I clicked on every link in the kids' Favorites, and all pages loaded fine, just slow, which is normal. Nick crashes it every time. Checked same links on my computer- all okay.

Got down and dirty. Ran Norton Live Update until it was dry, deleted all SR points, ran SFC, every virus and trojan scan (nothing found), then discovered the MS update site crashes the comp, too.

Only things left to do are
1. Uninstall and reinstall Norton (Symantec redirector problem?)
2. Reinstall XP (prob quickest- hardly anything on that comp, anyway)
3. Open case and investigate for Hardware issue?
4. Drive the truck over it several times, and break down and build the kids a new one...

Unless the great minds of the BBS have another suggestion? Something I overlooked? The kids want the comp back, and them using mine is out of the question! Any ideas welcomed.
TIA,
Johanna

 

Hi Johanna ...

To quote the King in The King and I, "Is a puzzlement!" Anything in Event Viewer?

Personally, I like option 4 best, but option 2 is probably the more practical.

 

Can you grab the event log entries for the bug checks? I'm very curious to see what they look like. Heres my wild ass guess.. Nick is a kids site, probably has a ton of whizbang flash, sounds, directx, etc.. When you hit this thrilling site, its invoking a deeper level of driver call than your machine would hit going to google. BSODs are the result of a kernel level version of DrWatson. A driver has made a foul.

Please go get the latest drivers from the OEMs for the following components:
Video card
Sound Card
BIOS/Motherboard
Run WindowsUpdate and install any drivers that it recommends.

Start there, try it again, and report back with some data from the bug checks. If you could use pstat or some other similar utility to snag the load addresses of the drivers, that would be very helpful as well.

This one would be a good canidate (after doing the above) to give microsoft a call on for some assistance.

 

Thanks, Joe, for your kind offer of assistance. I think you're right about the whiz bang effect- that's why I couldn't go to the MS site, either. I uninstalled NIS 2002, ran MS updates with no problem (and only the ICF on!) rebooted, and the kids are on NickJr right now. (Why aren't they outside riding their bikes??) So there is no firewall on the comp at the moment, except the native XP one, and no AV except for the filter on the ISP. This is something I frequently caution against, do not recommend, and would NEVER do on my own system!

The error I was getting was "symtdi "...a Norton file. I think this had to do with the Symantec update problem Charlesvar brought to our attention. (I told you this comp was SLOW!) and I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with it, now. eTrust, Norton, something else, or nothing?

But, at least I didn't have to clean up all the broken pieces after I backed the truck up several times...

Johanna

 

Hi Johannam,

I would opt for the re-install - you seem to have it down to a science and not fool around wih NIS, if NIS is really the problem.

After the install - NIS has to be updated, and my understanding is that subsequent updates fixed the problem.

Regards - Charles

 

Charles,
I uninstalled NIS and everything is working as expected, again. I tried to "fix" Norton with LU before I did the radical uninstall (you know how messy Norton is!) but it wouldn't work. (BTW, neither of the exes we were discussing in the other thread showed on this computer!) I could reinstall Norton, and hope that LU corrects any problems, but there are only 6 weeks or so left on this subscription, so I'm wondering if this isn't a good opportunity to try out other security alternatives?

I didn't have to repair or reinstall XP, but if I did, on that comp it would be a snap, because there is hardly any software on it, and NO data. (Kids are 4, 6, 7 & 10) just slow, like everything is, on there, anyway. (I am spoiled with my cable connection and my own computer. I expect to "point & click "!) The old HP was discarded by a relative last year. I wiped it and put XP Pro on there (It had Win 98, which I know next to nothing about) and figured if the kids killed it, no great loss. That HP is apparently quite hardy, because it seems that no matter what the kids do to it, it recovers. That's why I was frustrated with the selective crashing at certain sites. If it hadn't been for that other thread, I probably would not even have suspected Norton as the problem, would have wiped it and started fresh (which, theoretically, upon reinstalling Norton, would have corrected the crash issue), so you saved me several hours (that HP is slow, did I mention that? ) and I appreciate the "heads up" you gave me!

Johanna

 

I know you've been a Norton user (and Norton fan) for a long time. I was too and as long as it kept on doing it's job without causing problems I stayed with it.

However, yours is causing troubles - at least on the old machine - and from what I've seen, Symantec is determined to go the way McAfee did.

Especially with the kids light-duty hardware you might want to take a long look at light-weight AV and firewall. I switched over to the free version of AVG for virus protection a month or two back and so far, so good.

 

As you're probably aware, I'm no fan of Symantec/Norton, other than PartitionMagic and Drive Image, which Symantec acquired with their purchase of PowerQuest last December.

I've been using AVG's free version for over a year. The few viruses that have come aboard have been detected and removed immediately, meaning that the daily update and full check, run during the dinner hour, is almost redundant.