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Bought a new laptop, but it's developed an endless BSOD problem
Aegeri
Tiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered User regular
Tiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered User regular
Recently, in fact just a week ago, I got a new laptop! It was a joyous ocassion as I haven't been able to get a new laptop for a while and have badly needed one for a variety of purposes. The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite with an AMD processor, Radeon Graphics Card, 4 gig of RAM and Windows 8.1. Once I removed some of the crapware (mostly weird applications and games) and installed my own things I started the adjustment period to windows 8.1. Initially when I was installing things, I got this odd error where the computer BSOD in a repeated loop for a solid 10-15 minutes before it fixed itself. It didn't do this again until today where it got into an endless loop that nothing fixed, so I was forced to system restore the computer (deleting all of my changes, programs and similar) in the process.
The error it kept coming up with was: Invalid Process Attach Attempt
This has me extremely worried, because the laptop is less than a week old and my previous laptop did similar shenanigans, only for Toshiba to "discover" after the warranty expired that the motherboard had been severely faulty. I unfortunately also really need this computer for work, for a future job I am about to undertake and just for my sanity in general. When the computer entered this fatal endless BSOD loop, it did so for over an hour before I eventually gave up and had to use the system restore option. Oddly enough, I had not actually changed or installed anything on the computer for almost 4 days since I downloaded Fallout Tactics on steam last Thursday or something like this. When the computer entered todays BSOD loop, I was watching something on youtube but otherwise not doing anything remarkable on the machine. It just crashed (as in Firefox) and I needed to do some SCIENCE! so I thought, well might as well log off the computer and do that. Upon restarting the computer is when it went to the BSOD and then the next hour was just endlessly looping back to the BSOD over and over and over.
I'm not really blaming windows 8.1 for this either, because my experience suggests it could be a hardware problem and so I am checking the RAM and mother board, but what I need to know is how to get out of the loop of death. I tried to get it to boot into a safe mode equivalent, but it wouldn't have anything of it and so I just chose the system restore option as my last ditch hail mary. It did work, but once uninstalled nortons (which I detest) and reinstalled AVG the computer has begun doing it again just now. It gets to the lock screen, I click the touch pad and boom, instantly crashes to a BSOD with "Invalid Process Attach Attempt".
Once again, fixing it by using a system restore does work, but the instant anything updates or similar it seems to instantly go back into the BSOD cycle. Basically, if I don't install or change a thing the computer works perfectly - but the instant I change or remove a thing it's BSOD time from this point. Is there anything I can do or is this laptop utterly fucked?
Edit: It seems 50/50 actually, I was able to boot into safe mode with some fiddling. I'm going to update both the touchpad drivers and the catalyst drivers (for the Radeon) as I do know these two drivers commonly cause issues.
The error it kept coming up with was: Invalid Process Attach Attempt
This has me extremely worried, because the laptop is less than a week old and my previous laptop did similar shenanigans, only for Toshiba to "discover" after the warranty expired that the motherboard had been severely faulty. I unfortunately also really need this computer for work, for a future job I am about to undertake and just for my sanity in general. When the computer entered this fatal endless BSOD loop, it did so for over an hour before I eventually gave up and had to use the system restore option. Oddly enough, I had not actually changed or installed anything on the computer for almost 4 days since I downloaded Fallout Tactics on steam last Thursday or something like this. When the computer entered todays BSOD loop, I was watching something on youtube but otherwise not doing anything remarkable on the machine. It just crashed (as in Firefox) and I needed to do some SCIENCE! so I thought, well might as well log off the computer and do that. Upon restarting the computer is when it went to the BSOD and then the next hour was just endlessly looping back to the BSOD over and over and over.
I'm not really blaming windows 8.1 for this either, because my experience suggests it could be a hardware problem and so I am checking the RAM and mother board, but what I need to know is how to get out of the loop of death. I tried to get it to boot into a safe mode equivalent, but it wouldn't have anything of it and so I just chose the system restore option as my last ditch hail mary. It did work, but once uninstalled nortons (which I detest) and reinstalled AVG the computer has begun doing it again just now. It gets to the lock screen, I click the touch pad and boom, instantly crashes to a BSOD with "Invalid Process Attach Attempt".
Once again, fixing it by using a system restore does work, but the instant anything updates or similar it seems to instantly go back into the BSOD cycle. Basically, if I don't install or change a thing the computer works perfectly - but the instant I change or remove a thing it's BSOD time from this point. Is there anything I can do or is this laptop utterly fucked?
Edit: It seems 50/50 actually, I was able to boot into safe mode with some fiddling. I'm going to update both the touchpad drivers and the catalyst drivers (for the Radeon) as I do know these two drivers commonly cause issues.
Aegeri on
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If you could, get one (preferrably more) of the minidump files from the crashes (c:\windows\minidump), upload them somewhere, and post the link. The main lines to look for are PROCESS_NAME, IMAGE_NAME, and BUCKET_ID. The instances I encountered PROCESS_NAME was avgcsrava.exe, IMAGE_NAME was syntp.sys, and BUCKET_ID was something related to syntp. The cause in your case may not be the same, though, and I or somebody can hopefully help you sort it out.
As for safe mode, getting into it in Windows 8 is a whole production, no more F8 at boot:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/windows-startup-settings-including-safe-mode
You can also try uninstalling the touch pad driver from the device manager (which Windows 8 finally has a direct icon for in the control panel).
Just not worth the long term hassle of not knowing if it's going to break on you.
You've already done one reset, I'd do a second. If you don't want to do that, download the AVG remover tool. They are aware their uninstaller is crap and have a backup method.
I don't think I'd bother using the warranty, since this is a software issue, but that is an option.
Yeah, they probably won't do that because OEMs hate you. Or rather, they like you less than they like their deals with software distributors. Microsoft also broke the "one size fits all" keys they used in vista and 7, and this tool only works with retail keys. So if you want a fresh, clean windows 8, you're stuck badgering the OEM for a disk they aren't required to give you and hope that if they actually give you one, they didn't just package all the shit right with it.