BSoD/ Win 8.1/ 64 bit

[Pezzy]

Hi all.

I had a Windows 8.1 BSoD; gosh, it was so cute, it actually had one of those little sad-faced emoticons that looked like this --> : (

And then I had another about 6 hours later.

I've done no major hardware changes, and no recent installs of software (except for an old game: Shadow Man).

Anyway, after these BSoD screens, it just stayed there frozen, and there was no response from my keyboard or mouse, so I did a hard reset.

On this BSoD, there was a message saying to look up "clock_watchdog_timeout"; that info just lets you know you've experienced a BSoD.

I wanted to find out what caused this BSoD (frequently it's a bad driver/ incompatibility), so I ran a program you've probably heard of, "bluescreenview". But when I run it, no dump file is detected.

In Win 8.1, I did not find it in the "usual" place: C:\Windows I checked my settings to make sure a dmp file is going to be created; isn't that by going to: System; Advanced System Settings; Advanced tab; Startup and Recovery/ Settings button; in the "Write Debugging Information" area, "Automatic memory dump" is in the drop-down menu, and for "Dump File" it has "%SystemRoot%\MEMORY.DMP".

Just to be sure, I checked my CPU & GPU temps; all good. And then I also updated my NVidia graphic's card drivers to the latest, 335.23.

But as far as discovering the cause of my BSoD.....any ideas?
Pez

 

[PP Mguire]

Check C:\windows\minidump

You can also check the event viewer as well.

 

[Pezzy]

Hi PP Mguire; thanks for the reply.

OK, this is weird. I navigated to C:\Windows\Minidump......and there's nothing there. It's supposed to be a folder named Minidump, correct?

Just in case it's a "hidden" folder, in my Control Panel\ Folder Options, on the View tab I have the radio button selected next to "Show hidden files, folders, and drives"

And oh....I had already checked my Event Viewer. All I found in there was the Source was Kernel-Power, with Event ID #41, and Task Category #63. The general description given was: "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly." Yup, I already knew that; I wanted to find out why.

Any idea on why I don't have a minidump in C:\Windows\Minidump?

I've had no more BSoD's since I posted this, but remember like I mentioned in my original post, I've updated my NVidia graphics drivers since then. Perhaps that helped?

But still.....I wish I could find a Minidump file and read it (like with that program "bluescreenview"), or that the Event Viewer gave me something more than instead of just letting me know that my system rebooted without shutting down properly.
Pez