Started getting blue screens after reformatting

[CrazyCatLady]

I have a Compaq Presario V2000 laptop, running Windows XP Home SP2. It has an AMD Turion 64 processor.

It recently had a very nasty virus, and my system was inhibited to the point that I could only solve the problem by reformatting. It seemed to work like a charm. (Of course, I'm now running outdated versions of some of my software, but Windows has been doing nightly updates to remedy that.) I thought things were fine, until I started getting these "blue screens" that say an error was detected and the system is being shut down. It may be coincidental, but it seems to happen when I have just extracted some zipped files. When my system reboots, it says "The system recovered from a serious error." That's as much as I know about the problem. The blue screens are gone before I can record any information about the error. I know there are logs from when this has happened, but I don't know what program to open them in.

Could someone please help me figure out what is happening and what I can do about it?

[JPMiller]

Try WhoCrashed to analyze the dumps...
You don't wait for windows to auto-update... got to windows update and start checking off all updates until there aren't any...
You should be running SP3 anyway...

[CrazyCatLady]

@JPMiller: Thanks for the tips.

I downloaded WhoCrashed and had it analyze the logs. This is what it basically told me: There had been three crashes in the last week, and they all were probably caused by the module "ntoskml.exe." The first one was a "Bad Pool Caller," and the other two were "Kernel Mode Exception Not Handled M."

I plan to take JPMiller's suggestion and start downloading Windows updates manually. And it sounds as if my drivers are outdated because when I reformatted, I reinstalled the old drivers as they were on the recovery disk.

Meanwhile, I don't yet know if that will fix the problem. If anyone has any more info that would help, I would welcome it.

[JPMiller]

Do NOT use windows update drivers...
Go to the manufacturers websites to get the latest drivers...
I can't tell you how many times windows update drivers borked things up.

[JLK03F150]

Just so you know, Presario V2000 is a Series not a Model. The model number should be on a label on the underside of the notebook. You can find your updated drivers at the site below.

HP Support & Drivers | United States

[CrazyCatLady]

@JPMiller: Thanks for the tip. I have yet to hear of anything Microsoft *didn't* mess up.

I'll get the HP driver updates soon. I already got 21 of my missing Windows updates, and I'll get the big SP3 downloaded tonight. But in the meantime, when I restarted my machine to allow updates to take effect, I walked away from it, and when I came back, it had crashed again...TWICE. So at least I'm starting to see a pattern that this only happens shortly after I reboot. That's a big clue, right?

WhoCrashed had this to say about the two new crashes:

On Wed 5/11/2011 9:17:59 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini051111-02.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x155634)
Bugcheck code: 0x1000008E (0xFFFFFFFFC0000005, 0xFFFFFFFF8062C634, 0xFFFFFFFFB7DCFB08, 0x0)
Error: KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED_M
file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a kernel-mode program generated an exception which the error handler did not catch.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel.


On Wed 5/11/2011 9:15:15 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini051111-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x10868)
Bugcheck code: 0x1000000A (0x72667456, 0x2, 0x0, 0xFFFFFFFF804E7868)
Error: CUSTOM_ERROR
file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
The crash took place in the Windows kernel.

I'm desperate to figure out what this is. I get the feeling that if this keeps happening, my poor computer will give up the ghost soon.

[sharder8]

It's a boot sector virus. Could be an Alureon or Sality variant.

You can try running ComboFix or TDSS Rootkit Killer.

Did you do a FULL reformat or quick format when reloading Windows? You can also try fixboot and fixmbr from the repair console.


Harder

[CrazyCatLady]

A virus?! How? I must admit, I followed the directions in the user's manual, and looking back on it, it was a quick reformat. Does that mean my virus was never gone, or that I had another one I didn't know about?

The one that caused me to reformat was the Google hijack virus. My CPU usage was maxing out, and eventually I had so much freezing that it was impossible to even install or run combofix.

I'll check into combofix or the second program you mentioned. I'd do anything to avoid reformatting again. (I am unfamiliar with the other programs you mention, sharder8--fixboot and fixmbr?) Thanks for the info, btw.

[ShyguyXPC]

I found an article that would help u click HERE

Alright... This Freaking Tool is getting reported for spamming, the same wordpress URL address in almost every post, and postings in every thread have been utterly pointless, and not even read what was going on with the thread.

Have read enough of the useless, pointless suggestions and URL links.

[chareza]

thanks for good post!)