Recently I upgraded to windows vista from XP and I am having a problem. Currently I am in Safe Mode. When I go into my desktop everything is fine for a moment or two then my pc crashes.
Currently I have:
Processor: AMD Athlom xp 3000+ 2.16GHZ
Ram: 1.5 Gig
ATI Rad. 9550
I ran a problem/solution and got this:
Description
A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.
***
Windows detected a new device attached to your computer, but could not find the driver software it needs to make the device usable. Each device manufacturer typically includes driver software of a CD that comes with the device, or as a download from its website. The hardware ID of your device is PCI\VEN_10B9&DEV_5459&SUBSYS_910014FE&REV_00.
Problem signature
Problem Event Name: PnPDriverNotFound
can anyone give me any tips?
It seems that you need a driver, and that the OS doesn't find it. Did you skip a step when installing the OS when it asked for a driver? What driver was it?
Try getting the latest drivers for your video and sound cards? I haven't used Vista so I'm not sure how it crashes and what it logs, but that device ID it's giving you is for a 56k modem
Don't "upgrade" from XP to Vista, it never works well because of the differences between the Operating systems and their lack of compatibility. Back up your crap, reformat, then install Vista fresh. This will typically fix 99% of problems, although in a way it is using a sledge hammer to drive a finish nail if you will.
I honestly don't think it's a 'missing' drive per say, but a corrupt driver for a piece of hardware that isn't initialized until the OS fully starts is a possible culprit, a corrupted drive for graphic hardware which isn't fully started until the Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) process starts is possible. This eliminates networking/sound/system (RAM, Processor) hardware to be my suspects. If it was indeed a missing driver, it would simply cause the hardware to not work. If it was a missing driver for something serious enough to crash the system, it would crash before the system even booted.
Here are my ideas, it could be a start up program or service that isn't sharing memory like it should with the Windows OS service, or it could be a driver causing issues with other pieces of hardware, here's how to check. 1. program bugs: press Windows Key+R and type MSConfig. Go to the Services tab and check "Hide all Microsoft Services" and uncheck everything that is still on the list, then sift over to the Startup tab and uncheck everything except "Microsoft Windows Operating System". If you have any OEM drivers in there, like a touch pad or some sound card drivers, those could be the issue, and although disabling them may clear up the problem, function of said devices maybe lost. After this, restart and see if it blue screens again. Now, the next option if it is still crashing may take longer, but we'll try to find a fast solution. Download and install the Vista Upgrade Adviser to your system, running it should identify any outdated drivers on your system that are not working right with vista and need to be updated. If this returns no results, press start>right click Computer>Manage>Device Manager>get a sandwich and something to drink, this may take a while>proceed to open up every devices properties and go to the Resources tab and it should tell you if there are any conflicts. Also, while Management Console is open, you can take a peek at the Event Log, but typically this doesn't record specifics about the crash, just that there was a crash (big help huh?)
If you find none with this, I'm about out of ideas, at this point I only have some random little common fix up tools to run. Start>type "cmd">right click the cmd.exe in the results and click "run as administrator">type without the quotes "chkdsk /f", the program will ask you to schedule a scan after restart, say yes>after chkdsk is scheduled type "sfc /scannow" with your Windows Vista Disk in the CD drive, this will scan all protected windows files to see if they are in their original versions and if not pull them off the disk. Finally, restart and let chkdsk run, if that runs and it is still crashing, I have one more idea before saying "screw it, format and reinstall".
Insert your Vista disk and tell it to install as an upgrade again. Completely reinstalling the system right over the old one will hopefully replace the bad driver, or fix whatever is causing this, and will still preserve your settings/programs.
On a side note, it can be something you least expect, one time I started downloading an anime OST torrent with uTorrent and it caused a blue screen after 10 seconds of downloading every time, I didn't even open the downloaded files or anything, it was just some random little memory bug, granted this was with a Vista Beta.
I forgot to mention, I've never seen an unsolvable problem with a Windows installation if you can still get into safe mode. Have faith... (corny, I know, but bear with me).