As I have previously posted my brand new Dell PC has been getting regular blue screens of death. I have suspicions that an automatic Microsoft Vista update has something to do with it. But I also thought it might be a hardware issue since it seemed to be running a little hot and would get the dreaded blue screen after running awhile even if there wasn't any activity.
Last night I spent about two hours on the phone with Joyce from Dell who sounded a whole lot like she was Indian--that's as in Bombay, not Shawnee. After giving her my error message from the BSOD, she walked me through a safe mode reboot, a system restore and a driver update for video and audio. She was confident that would fix the problem. When I asked her why she was so sure she told me she handled my type of call and error message all the time. That made me wonder why Vista updates cause that type of problem.
Afterward I left my PC on for a couple of hours and I got no blue screen. That's a good sign at this point since it hasn't been running more than an hour without one. Hopefully this is a fix for what ails it.
Joyce. who seemed to really know what she was doing, told me that the problem was a conflict between the Vista update that I was suspicious of and my video and audio drivers. To be honest I don't even know what a driver is on a computer. I thought those guys were all like Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy.
Anyway for the techies out there, I have a question. Assuming Joyce is right, whose responsibility would it be for a Vista update and my video and audio drivers to be compatible? Is it the video/audio people or Microsoft? Could it be me for not getting updates? Remember that this computer is less than two months old.
Seriously, I'm clueless here. Even more than normal. Because now I'm wondering if I should let Vista updates happen automatically anymore.
April 10, 2008 in
Computers |
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Your Comments
Unfortunately it is your responsibility (not that you would or should know this even if you read the user guide cover to cover). I think that mentality exists to support the geek squad and keep you in the dark a bit. I'm in a PC world because I must... but I'd rather be elsewhere.
Regarding the heat, if this part keeps up, have a look at the location of your fan which should be on the bottom of your notebook. We have had some issues with some Dell fans getting a bit clogged up which causes over heating and then shut down.
Posted by: Alecto at Apr 11, 2008 10:41:03 AM
It's sort of a damned if you do/damned if you don't situation.
It seems like the manufacturers don't get much time to see if their software is compatible (this type of driver by the way is just a hardware/software interface--it basically tells Windows how to interact with your hardware). So you can either wait for them to give the all-clear, which may be weeks later, or expose yourself to potential security threats because Windows is not patched.
Personally, I would keep apply the updates and just fix it after the fact if something goes wrong. Windows should be creating "restore points" before the patches are applied so you can undo them if needed. But that can be a tricky process if you aren't comfortable getting that geeky :)
Posted by: Andrew at Apr 11, 2008 11:30:22 AM
Alecto--my PC is a slim desktop, but I no longer think there's a heat problem. Not sure if the driver updates, etc fixed the heat but it appears it fixed the blue screens.
Andrew--good to hear from you. I'll leave the Vista updates on automatic and see what happens. As you say I can always go back.
Posted by: Lewis at Apr 11, 2008 1:44:41 PM
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