Explain the blue screen/memory dump going on (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Just bought a very expensive Lenovo T60
laptop. The thing is loaded! A T2600
dual-core processor, 2 gigs ram and a 128
graphics card.

Imagine my surprise yesterday when after
loading in my Logitech notebook videocam
software and running it -- the computer went
to blue screen stating (among other things)
it was dumping memory.

In fact, it continued to do this after several
reboots until I uninstalled the Logitech webcam
drivers.

At this point, I can still USE the Logitech
webcam on my laptop, but can't have it load the
drivers at startup. After I do use it and shut
dowm, the computer goes to blue screen and dumps
memory.

Why is it doing this?! With 2GB of memory in
my system I would expect there's plenty of memory
available here.

I will admit I have my desktop video resolution
set to HIGH (32 bit) instead of MID (16 bit) and
perhaps, if you feel I should do so, I can put
that setting down lower.

My laptop has the exact same configuration as
my desktop as far as system and video memory as
well as dual-core processor. The desktop handles
everything I run on it with no problems. Just
trying to figure out why an attempt to run the
videocam is causing a blue screen/memory dump.

Should I begin by bringing my desktop resolution
back down to 16 bit (MID setting)?

 

[Marko Berg]

You computer "dumping memory" means it's writing a log file to the hard drive that you can use to determine the cause of a crash. Since you already know what's causing your computer to crash, I can only suggest trying to obtain the most recent driver from Logitech's online support. If the webcam is a very new model, and there isn't a newer driver version, perhaps it would help to complain to Logitech about this.

You shouldn't need to compromise on your display settings by using 16-bit colours. Your webcam should be expected to work perfectly at even the highest possible setting.

EDIT: The memory dump setting can be changed in Windows if you prefer the computer to just crash and restart quickly without writing the log file.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

It seems very clear that the drivers you installed simply aren't compatible with your computer. It seems almost proven since you say that with drivers, the machine BSOD:s every time and without them it runs fine.

You can break Windows by installing drivers if the drivers are bad, old or plain incompatible. This is true of most operating systems, since drivers are the "glue" to make hardware A talk to hardware B in the computer; drivers often access the OS on the lowest possible level and thus the OS has a hard time protecting itself against bad drivers.

When those drivers cause a crash, it brings the entire operating system to a screeching halt and presto, Blue Screen Of Death.

It has nothing to do with shortcomings in the laptop, memory or other available resources, in other words. You just need a set of drivers that don't slice it off at the knees.

The memory dump it speaks of is merely an image of what the machine was up to and what it had in memory when it crashed. That info is usable (for experts) to determine what caused this very bad crash in the operating system.

Just wanted to expand a bit on what Marko is saying, but the bottom line is: do not use those drivers. Find newer (or older) ones and try those instead, otherwise contact Logitech techsupport.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Typically a flawed driver will attempt to access memory that is reserved for or actually in use by another driver or application - hence the memory dumps. You've got two applications trying to write to the same physical memory address, each of them claiming sole "ownership" - Windows understandably bails.

You see this a lot with drivers that involve video memory. In the bad old days of Windows 3.1 and 95 something like 90% of "general protection faults" were related to video memory and ill-behaved drivers - mostly because the managment of this memory was left up to the individual apps and drivers. In later versions of Windows the OS has much more "traffic cop" control over these things, but that doesn't mean a bad driver can't still screw things up.

A lot of memory issues are also related to the order that things load in, which seems to be the case here. Many application programs, drivers and other bits of software require more memory when they start up than when they're running. They grab a big chunk of RAM, run their little start-up housekeeping routines, then settle down to their normal size. If you have a lot of things starting up when you boot you machine, you can have one program "step on" the memory reserved by the program that loads immediately before or after it, especially if one is a badly-written or outdated driver. Back in the old DOS days one of the ways of tweaking conventional memory was to tinker with the order that various things loaded in. Based your description this sounds like your problem.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Patrick Sun]

Also check the Lenovo website for updated video drivers for the laptop model, don't assume the video drivers that came with the laptop are the latest and greatest ones from the laptop maker.