How do I sort this out ?

If this is in the wrong section , forgive me. Anyway , I have been getting this problem recently and I desperately need help to sort it out if possible. Out of the blue , the screen will turn blue and this message appears.
" A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. A wait operation , attach process , or yield was attempted from a DPC routine"
And at the bottom of the screen ,
"Beginning dump of physical memory.
Physical memory dump complete"
In laymens terms , what is happening and How can I stop it? Please note I am a complete novice when it comes to technical jargon , so any help must be very easy to understand !!!!!
Thank you

You have the blue screen of death; http://www.kingsoftsecurity.com/faq/?qa=1/what-is-a-blue-screen-of-death-how-to-fix-bsod-error
This is caused by corrupt or incorrect device drivers (try installing the latest device drivers for your hardware), corrupt registry or hardware/software incompatible problems & generally rears it’s head after you’ve installed new software, hardware or made changes to your system. It’s also more common with the older Windows operating systems & hardware.

BDOD can be difficult to fix for a novice but a search around the internet should give you some pointers on where to start. Be careful with some of the sites as they ultimately involve buying software after they have supposedly diagnosed your problem but it doesn’t always work!

If you have the original software discs, sometimes it's easier to do a complete new install of your operating system, hardware devices & software packages; do this one at time so you can roll back using System Restore if it occurs again, at least you will then know what is causing the problem.

Thank you Richard. Unfortunately I do not have the original disks but I do use the restore. Now I have a question that may be ridiculous to you but as I know no different , here goes. When you use system restore then presumably you are restoring to a point before any problem you had. If that is the case , then why does the problem return?. I have also heard about mini dumps or similar , what are these and where do I find them?
Sorry to be such a pain Richard , but I do appreciate your time and effort.
Dairmuid.

Caoineadhcuchulainn515 said:

When you use system restore then presumably you are restoring to a point before any problem you had. If that is the case , then why does the problem return?

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It could be that the only restore points you have available are after the point where the original problem arose. Unfortunately “Windows Restore” seems to have a habit of deleting restore points, usually when you most need them but I’ve no idea why. Another way around it may be to use system backup but this is obviously not much use if you’ve never backed up the system! If it’s a machine that came with a pre-configured operating system, there is usually a backup of the original system configuration on the hard drive but restoring this will overwrite everything you have added/done since the machine was new so it’s vital you back up all your working files before restoring the mirror image of the O/S.

Caoineadhcuchulainn515 said:

I have also heard about mini dumps or similar , what are these and where do I find them?

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As I understand it, when BSOD occurs, a physical data dump is written to the hard drive (only viewable in DOS mode I think) but to be blunt your looking at it will probably be akin to reading a novel written in Mandarin! I do build my own systems & am a fairly experienced user & usually manage to get myself out of problem O/S/hardware/software situations one way or another (I’ve currently got one on a combo drive!) but I’m certainly no expert trouble shooter so there may be other contributors that can better advise.

How old is the PC & what operating system, do you have?

You can try Whocrashed which will provide information from the minidump. It might give you some pointers as to the cause.

I had a laptop some time ago that was doing this. Does anything cause it, or does it just do it when it fancies?? Sounds to me that you have a virus or some kind of nasty that's causing the machine to hang - hence the BSOD. The laptop in question belonged to a 14 year old boy who didn't care what he was doing online or what he was downloading!!
It might not work on your system, but try this - it worked for me.
1. Get hold of a copy of the software at the following url.
http://siri.geekstogo.com/SmitfraudFix.php
2. Completely disconnect from t'internet (unplug the modem, or turn your router off, whatever you need to do to ensure you are NOT connected to t'internet). It's not crucial, this bit, but I do it because I get paranoid!!
3.Boot into Safe Mode - to do this, either F8 as soon as you turn the machine on - keep pressing it til the machine does something, it's hard to do it in exactly the right place!!
If you cannot get into Safe Mode this way, try Start>Run. Type msconfig, hit enter. Click the BOOT.INI tab, and select /SAFEBOOT. Then restart the machine, and it will boot into Safe mode.
4. Now, run SmitFraudFix.exe. Select the option to "Clean" (if memory serves, it's option 2).
5. Let the tool do it's thing completely. When it asks you if you would like to clean the registry, press Y. I believe it will shut when it's finished, if not, pressing Q will do it. Now, assuming you had a desktop wallpaper before, (picture of your kids, partner, mam, whatever) your screen will now be blue in place of it. That's how you know it worked. If the tool left your wallpaper there, then there was nothing that it needed to remove.
6. Whilst you're in safe Mode, and disconnected from t'internet, it makes sense to run a complete virus scan. It may take a few hours, depending on your system, your AV software, and how much system resource it devotes to running the scan.
7. Now, your antivirus has finished, and done whatever it was gonna do with whatever nasties it found. (if anything at all)
8. Reboot into normal mode. If you did it through MSCONFIG, you will need to go back to the BOOT.INI tab, and untick /SAFEBOOT. If you did it through pressing F8, then a normal reboot will do it.
9. Reconnect to t'internet. Get hold of a copy of SuperAntiSpyware from here.....
http://www.superantispyware.com/download.html
10. Install in the time-honoured fashion, and make sure it's updated to the latest definition file. Then run it and let it do it's thing.

If this hasn't worked, you've lost nothing, it will DO NO PERMANENT HARM to your machine. It's just cost you half an hour of your time. There may be easier ways of doing what I've just told you, but I've done this on several machines, and it's always worked for me.
Good Luck.

Something else that just occured to me.......
It will almost certainly be worth installing C-Cleaner, too. http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
In this program, there is a facility to clean the Registry. You can either do this before you do my above steps, instead of, or as well as.

But it costs 20 quid & like all the bloody "cure all" software that pops up during web searches these days, there is no guarantee it will cure the problem. From experience, I'm also sure you can find something to do the same job equally as good for free if you search around for it.

BTW, the first link in your other post sent my anti-virus into panic mode & shut down my browser!

Richard C said:

But it costs 20 quid & like all the bloody "cure all" software that pops up during web searches these days, there is no guarantee it will cure the problem. From experience, I'm also sure you can find something to do the same job equally as good for free if you search around for it.

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... Yes, if you look right there on the CCleaner site, there it is for free.

CCLeaner free version Top right hand , click it.

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner

Monkeh said:

Yes, if you look right there on the CCleaner site, there it is for free.

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Oops

I don't pay for any AV software, or Malware cleaners, so there's no way I'd advocate someone else doing so!! Richard, what AV do you run? Maybe it's a little strict, my AV (AVG 2012, installed on sunday as an upgrade from 2011) says nowt about that webpage, in fact I just clicked it, and it's open now. Dunno what the issue is with yours, but I've never had a problem with it. Anyone else clicked that link?? Had a problem with it?? We really need to wait for the owner of the thread to come back now, and tell us what he/she is going to do. Whatever happens, the registry certainly needs cleaning........... C-Cleaner FREE, you know the one with the link to the free software at the top right of the page will be able to do that.

clampchamp said:

I don't pay for any AV software, or Malware cleaners, so there's no way I'd advocate someone else doing so!!

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No & neither do/would I.

clampchamp said:

Richard, what AV do you run? Maybe it's a little strict, my AV (AVG 2012, installed on sunday as an upgrade from 2011)

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So do I; I’ve run the latest free version of AVG for many virus free years, virtually since it was released.

clampchamp said:

says nowt about that webpage, in fact I just clicked it, and it's open now. Dunno what the issue is with yours, but I've never had a problem with it. Anyone else clicked that link?? Had a problem with it??

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Strange doesn’t seem to be a problem today but yesterday it caused AVG to panic & flash the "serious threat" lights twice!

clampchamp said:

We really need to wait for the owner of the thread to come back now, and tell us what he/she is going to do. Whatever happens, the registry certainly needs cleaning........... C-Cleaner FREE, you know the one with the link to the free software at the top right of the page will be able to do that.

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FWIW, my bet is the OP is running some elderly hardware with something pre-XP which, from my fading memory, seemed to be far more prone to BSOD.

Sorry about my total oblivion moment yesterday ; I just didn’t see the freebie link, God knows why!

Maybe, but there is an awful lot of malicious code out there than can cause a BSOD, running any hardware, on any operating system. The lappy that I dealt with before wasn't six months old, running Vista Premium, (which, if I may add, is a truly vile OS) and that was still hanging to a BSOD. Mind, like I said before, he's a 14 year old who didn't care where he went on t'internet, nor what he looked at. I'm pretty sure that the thread owner has a virus, and that's what's causing the machine to hang all the while. If only he'd come back and at least give us some other symptoms...............
By the way, what the hell does FWIW mean??

clampchamp said:

Maybe, but there is an awful lot of malicious code out there than can cause a BSOD, running any hardware, on any operating system.

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Yes that’s true & I’ve picked up a few infections in the past when seeking out/downloading pirate software; I’ve now changed my ways, honest!

clampchamp said:

The lappy that I dealt with before wasn't six months old, running Vista Premium, (which, if I may add, is a truly vile OS)

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I found ME very unstable & by far the worst of the bunch, before MS switched to their NT based platform with the later systems but Vista was pretty crappy; I only used it for a couple of months before switching back to XP Pro which is still my standby OS. Running Win 7 as the main OS on my latest box & I’ve been pretty happy with it until now as it's just started refusing to run my combo drive; I have a thread running if you’ve any ideas!

clampchamp said:

By the way, what the hell does FWIW mean??

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For What It’s Worth.