Several Possibly Related Graphics Card Driver Problems

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Hullo folks,
I'm a few problems at the moment with my laptop and it's graphics card driver.

ATi Radeon Xpress 200M Driver Version 8.31.100.32 (24/11/2006)
Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)

These drivers are the Microsoft ones which came with the PC - although I did use ATi's own drivers, these had the same problems/crashes.

The first issue I noticed was a blue screen of death on Windows Start-up. I must admit that Microsoft have snazzed it up visually since the old days of Windows 9x.

All I managed to catch from the error message shown was that it was related to the display driver and the machine was going to be shut down to prevent damage to my system. Although there was almost a full page of details, the screen passed within five seconds before the laptop powered off and rebooted, not leaving much time to read it all.

If it's relevant, on reboot I was told about an unexpected shut down and was offered the ability to start in safe mode. I refused.

After logging on, which took much longer than usual, leaving me staring at a black screen for twenty seconds, the UI appeared, followed by a "Problem Reports and Solutions" dialogue popping up telling me Windows had recovered from an "Unexpected Shutdown"

All I can get now from the "Problem Reports and Solutions" component related to this first ssue is the following:

Product
Windows

Problem
Shut down unexpectedly

Date
28/02/2008 18:00

Status
Solution Available

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 2057

Files that help describe the problem (some files may no longer be available)
Mini022808-01.dmp
sysdata.xml
Version.txt

Extra information about the problem
BCCode: 116
BCP1: 8AF4D300
BCP2: 890F78C8
BCP3: 00000000
BCP4: 00000002
OS Version: 6_0_6000
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1
Server information: 9bc2fe69-2242-463f-a4d6-15790d99fb7a

After it finished checking for a solution, it told me it was related to the graphics card drivers and I should update them and/or contact ATi for support. At the time I was already running the latest ATi drivers anyhow so it wasn't really too helpful.

After this event, I've also being having problem playing Flash movies in full screen in Firefox 2.0.0.12 with the latest Flash player. After about forty - fifty seconds, the screen goes black and, although the sound continues, it returns to non-full screen viewing after about five seconds with the following error message:



An entry also is created in the "Problem Reports and Solutions" component:

Product
Windows

Problem
Video hardware error

Date
08/03/2008 07:25

Status
Not Reported

Description
A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 2057

Files that help describe the problem
WD-20080308-0723.dmp
sysdata.xml
Version.txt

Extra information about the problem
BCCode: 117
BCP1: 8BAB5008
BCP2: 894F78C8
BCP3: 00000000
BCP4: 00000000
OS Version: 6_0_6000
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1

All entries related to it are identical in every way excluding date.

On another note, the Flash related crash also occurs in Internet Explorer 7. This is not consistent with my searches on the subject which report a crashing issue with the plugin used in Firefox and Opera, but not in the ActiveX control used in Internet Explorer. This makes me think it may be something a little more sinister than a simple bug.

This is the point at which I switched to using the mentioned Windows drivers - no success appeared by moving to them. If anything it made the flash crash worse - it now only took twenty or fewer seconds for a flash movie to crash in full screen mode.

Earlier today, I also had the blue screen crash on boot again. It was a clone of the previous event with exactly the same error message provided by the "Problem Reports and Solutions" component:

Product
Windows

Problem
Shut down unexpectedly

Date
08/03/2008 07:25

Status
Solution Available

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 2057

Files that help describe the problem (some files may no longer be available)
Mini030808-01.dmp
sysdata.xml
Version.txt

Extra information about the problem
BCCode: 116
BCP1: 8BAB5008
BCP2: 894F78C8
BCP3: 00000000
BCP4: 00000002
OS Version: 6_0_6000
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1
Server information: 556d009b-82db-4f65-9c40-22917414bcc0

It's very strange/borderline terrifying to say the least - the last time I saw the blue screen was in Windows 98 SE when my ancient system was having some very serious hardware problems.

All help/suggestions/warnings appreciated.

Thanks

Quick Update: for some real reason the Windows Aero colour scheme shut off and switched to Vista Basic when I used Real Player (in Firefox) to watch an embedded video. I'm not sure if this is relevant, but after I closed the windows which was embedding the Real Player plugin the system did not switch back to Aero - I had to restart Firefox itself to do that.

The odd thing is that this has never actually happened before while watching embedded "Real" movies, so it could also be somehow associated with the origional events.