I seem to be having random crashes. So far it seems to be happening mostly when I am using the web (IE or Firefox).There is no warning and no messages, just a dead OS with black screen and I have to reboot.Any ideas anybody? It is so unreliable I have to revert to Vista to read & contribute to this forum. AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.41 GHz. on Asus M2N-E-SLI. 2.0 GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT Windows Experience Index = 4.8 ........... Also running Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop and wife has an old banger running WinME

I've gotten about 10 BSOD reboots so far. I'm running win 7 64 bit on a phenom 9850 quad core 8GB ram Radeon 4850 graphics card. Was very unstable, especially as I tried (took 4 attempts) to connect the drivers for my wireless network card from the list. One crash was so bad I had to reinstall windows7 because it gave me an "windows can't access the specified device or path..." error whenever I tried to click anything on the start menu - computer, control panel, search, etc. I've had BSOD's when using IE, and other apps. Seems totally random. It doesn't like my machine so much. Lol.

Update:The computer is not crashing - just the display! I can recover from it by switching off the monitor (Gateway FPD1960 TFT LCD) and restarting it.My graphics driver has updated itself so I can't think what to do next.All seems ok as long as I am offline. Seems it only has a problem when I'm online using IE.I'll use Firefox from now and see how that affects things.AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.41 GHz. on Asus M2N-E-SLI. 2.0 GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT Windows Experience Index = 4.8 ........... Also running Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop and wife has an old banger running WinME

The first thing to do is to check the Event Viewer for details around the time of the crash.First check the Application and System logs in the Windows logs section,then check the other logs as time allows (there's a lot of 'em) - John

Hi, Yes, I agree. With John's suggestion we may find which module IE crashes on. If no clue can be found (It logs that IE crashes on a system file), I suggest that you temporary disable the anti-virus and firewall first. If the issue persists, use Clean Boot Mode to narrow down the root cause. How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista Hope it helps.Arthur Xie - MSFT

Update:Before getting in deep with Event Viewer etc, I had the idea of adding a second display running as a clone.I then found that when the original (Gateway) display drops out the second (Daewoo TV/monitor) keeps running ok.This morning I have swapped the monitors so they are running on alternative video outputs. It is still the case that the Gateway drops out (though only once so far) but the Daewoo keeps going, As I said before, I never had a problem with the Gateway running Vista. so the only conclusion so far is that the Gateway doesn't like Win7.I'll try to get to grips with the Event Viewer ready for the next time the Gateway drops out.AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.41 GHz. on Asus M2N-E-SLI. 2.0 GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT Windows Experience Index = 4.8 ........... Also running Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop and wife has an old banger running WinME

Final Update (I think)At the last dropout I checked through the Event Log and didn't find anything. This to me infers the problem is external, i.e something in the monitor.On a whim I increased the refresh rate to 75Hz and everything has been running sweetly for the past 7 hours.Thanks to all for your inputs, sorry if I've wasted your time.TonyPS I'm really getting to like Win7! AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.41 GHz. on Asus M2N-E-SLI. 2.0 GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT Windows Experience Index = 4.8 ........... Also running Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop and wife has an old banger running WinME

Hi TonyIt's never a waste of time when you find a solution to a gnarly problem.Good job troubleshooting this.I marked your post as the answer to the problem.Hope this helps. Ronnie Vernon MVP