Finally, the "blue screens" spill has been stopped!

...to coincide with the (temporary?) stop of leaking oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Seriously, after experiencing 20 stop errors (aka the "Blue Screen of Death" —affectionately?) in a period of roughly two months (the age of this brand new laptop I'm using to blog right now), I was able to make it work (I cross my fingers). How did I do it? Apparently, by simply updating the corresponding drivers found in support.dell.com. Among the frustrations, during the process, was my inability to completely take advantage of the 64-bit debugging tools, found in the Windows Hardware Developer Central (WHDC), which I mentioned before in this blog. However, I was consistently getting these blue screen while logging into public wireless networks, but not at home. Did the solution come through the many driver updates I made? Definitely. Was it perhaps the Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter, or
the Intel 82577LM Gigabit Network Connection, or the Dell Touchpad, or the Intel(R) Network Connections (Product Version: 15.2.0.0), or the HID-compliant consumer control device? I don't know. I've been connected for more than 2 hours to this new Starbucks free WiFi service, blogging, somewhere in Park Avenue, and my PC is running smoothly. As lame as the BP efforts to stop the oil gusher (for 3 months) in the Gulf were the "efforts" (for 2 months!) of the Dell Tech Support. Now I'm finally beginning to enjoy this beautiful machine running this beautiful operating system! I also came across an interesting page about Demystifying the 'Blue Screen of Death' (a little old, though) with interesting subjects like Anatomy of a Blue Screen, The Error Message, Modules That Have Loaded, Modules That Were About to Load, Kernel Debugger, among others. Time to go back to the manuals!

Are blue screens Windows 7 black magic?

Nobody seems to provide straight answers to the regrettable and common stop errors in some Windows 7 configurations. Let's make a quick review. 1) DELL. One of the "Resolution Expert Center" experts, after different exchanges both by e-mail and via chat, and after having received a copy of one of my dump files and other useful information, he concluded: "In order to correct the issue with a corrupt ntoskrnl file, the operating system will need to either be repaired or reinstalled." Corrupt kernel file? How about being able to watch videos, movies, etc.? Totally clueless? If that was the case my computer would not start in the first place (!) Just following a script, not providing actual customer service. 2) Microsoft. I'm sure the information is there in their huge knowledge bases, but is not easy to come by; besides you have to know what to look for. Their debugging tools seem to be, from my view point of a IT generalist, very good, but it's not for regular folks. Finally, 3) Web forums. Most of the times, the contributors seem to be as clueless as the people longing for answers. Apparently there is no exact science when it comes to figuring out these "stop errors" or "BSODs." But the process is illuminating; at least it has been for me.

Still aggravated by blue screens....

I don't understand, I have watched complete games of the World Cup, ran 3 different virtual machines, studied and compiled .NET applications and, for some unknown reason, my PC crashes not a moment too soon when I connect to a wireless network (not in my home)...