Blue Screen of Mad

[Xtreme_Rampage]

Greetings, I have problem recently whenever I go online. If I try to play music (such as Winamp) or any other applications that create sounds, my PC will immediately go to blue screen! The blue screen error message usually say something like "TRAP_UNKNOWN".

I connect to the internet using dial-up 56k modem. My PC is Windows XP, and I have Sound Blaster Audigy sound card. I suspect the problem has to do with the modem and sound card, I have previously installed SB Audigy sound card to replace my on-board sound (which never cause this problem). I have tried to change the modem but it's useless. I have also tried turning off modem sound via Device Manager, dial-up and modem properties but whenever there's a music (or long sound) my PC still turn into blue screen...I have also checked the COM Port, ICQ (whatever it is in the properties) but they're not conflicting which makes this weird...if you can help, please please help, I would like to be able to hear music and stream online (yes, I know it's slowww but still...) thank you!!

[caperjack]

hi, this link is for a win 2000 based computer but seems to be what as you already know is the cause of you error .
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=297088&sd=RMVP

[Xtreme_Rampage]

Actually my sound card is Sound Blaster Audigy unlike the one mentioned in that site (SB Live), and when I went to uninstall it the uninstallation wizard gave so many list of Creative-related files, and I'm not even sure which one to delete since some of them looked very important (like drivers). Also, the blue screen sometimes show not only the "TRAP_CAUSE_UNKNOWN" error but "IRQ_HARDWARE_LESS OR EQUAL" or something like that. To make matters worse, now I can't go online with Internet Explorer, my PC will go to blue screen as soon as I open it, even simple application like dictionary sometimes cause it (when online of course). I can now only go online with Mozilla Firefox.

[SnowDog]

It's pretty clear that it is more than likely a hardware fault - certainly the original problem.

How did you try to uninstall the Creative software? It always makes me nervous when people say 'delete' and not 'uninstall'. If you 'uninstall' using the Add/Remove programs application (or go via Device Manager) it will just say 'Creative' and you uninstall it with one (or two) button clicks. If you're trying to delete files manually you're going to cause all sorts of problems because Windows will still think they're there via the registry when they're not. The second it tries to access one of them: Bang. You'll have a problem.

When you get those blue screens, what is the STOP code it gives? By the sounds of it you're getting different ones.

If you want to get to the bottom of it quickly, I'd advise a clean reinstall and see if it still does it. It might not.

When we're dealing with problems like this at work, the whole point is to sort problems out quickly for the customers and a full recovery eliminates any possible software issue in one go. Then you can focus on finding out what's going on.

[Xtreme_Rampage]

I'm not too sure what to do here, should I uninstall the sound from Device Manager or Add/Remove programs? Whenever I open Add/Remove programs there are some Creative-related programs like Creative MediaSource, Creative System Information and Sound Blaster Audigy. Sorry for the typo, I was referring to 'delete automatically' (uninstall). I will try to report the error messages and codes when I got the chance

[SnowDog]

This is why I recommend the full recovery - if it IS SW then it could be anything. But it can't do any harm taking them all off. The only thing is, if it doesn't sort the problem it hasn't proved anything.

Sometimes, uninstalling through Device Manager and then redetecting the various HW can sort problem out if it is down to settings, but if the actual files are corrupted in some way it won't do anything. Uninstalling something in Device Manager isn't the same as uninstalling via Add/Remove (which deletes all/most files).

Try Device Manager first, then try a complete uninstall of all Creative files through Add/Remove. But from the sounds of things you're going to have problems now because the errors are getting more frequent.

[Xtreme_Rampage]

Here's the error message in blue screen:

*** STOP: 0x00000012 (0x00000002,0x8001003B,0x00000000,0x00000000)

I hope it can help. I'll try your suggestion by uninstalling through Device Manager, there are 8 components under Sound here, I'll uninstall Sound Blaster Audigy and report the result

[SnowDog]

OK. I've now come to the same conclusion as caperjack. It doesn't matter that you've got an Audigy and that link specifically mentions Sound Blaster.

However, since this is a new issue and there was apparently no problem before it started, you have either got a software problem that will more than likely be resolved by a full recovery or a hardware problem, which won't.

You're not going to fix this by going in changing things (unless you get really lucky).

Back up your data and recover. Then see what happens.

[caperjack]

Here's the error message in blue screen:

*** STOP: 0x00000012 (0x00000002,0x8001003B,0x00000000,0x00000000)

the stop 00000012 is a General stop error ,the fact it says something like "TRAP_UNKNOWN". means it doesn't know what is causing the problem . according to this web site , http://www.aumha.org/win5/kbestop.php scroll down to 0x00000012: TRAP_CAUSE_UNKNOWN, not far down the page .

[Xtreme_Rampage]

All right, here's what I've done:

- Complete uninstall of my modem driver (from Add/Remove program and Device Manager)
- Complete uninstall of my SB Audigy driver (Creative site uninstall guide step by step ->from Add/Remove program and Device Manager, etc)
- Move the modem to another PCI slot, further than the sound card

After restart, I install the newest Audigy driver from Creative website. None worked, and it seems I'm even more screwed up now after installing the latest Audigy driver which made my sound card appear as 'Emulated' in DxDiag, even worse, when I try to auto-update to another updates from Creative website, it said:
"Creative Software AutoUpdate was unable to detect any Creative products attached to your computer."

I don't know why they can't detect my sound card because when I use Lavalys (similiar to AIDA32), it clearly able to identify my sound card as Sound Blaster Audigy. I've tried to uninstall and install several other Audigy drivers but none wanted to install (they claimed my sound card is different than the driver).

So right now I can't even use the sound card properly, and I'm forced to enable the on-board audio that came with the motherboard just to be able to hear sound. The good thing tho, is that when I use my on-board audio as the default audio I can hear music (and other program with sound) as well using internet at the same time without any blue screen, but with reduced audio quality. If anyone can come up with any enlightening solution, I'd be greatly appreciate!

[SnowDog]

Right from the start this was screaming out that there could be a hardware problem with the sound card or possibly the PCI slot.

It looks even more like that at the moment.

[caperjack]

My nephew bought a blaster audigy from tigerdirect.com
,open box ,of course no driver cd,we tried to download drivers from blaster site and get the same message it doesent reconize the card ,reason !! because the downlaod drivers are all updates and we need to have the orignals installed first !so we can't use the card as we cant find orignals anywhere on the net ,.