Device driver conflicts - how do you find them?

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paulg7083

I recently had a new PC built for me - AMD Athlon 64 3800+ with ASUS
motherboard. I installed Windows XP Pro with SP2.
Since then I have had numerous instances of the PC just powering off
suddenly, even when I am not using the machine, sometimes in the midle
of the night. Another symptom is the sudden powering down of my screen
when I right-click on ANY video file (the screen comes right back after
about 1-2 seconds).
At first I suspected a power supply problem and had my vendor replace
that component. While the PC was in the shop the technician said that
all his tests seemed to pass and he suspected that I had driver
conflicts.. Since that time the PC has behaved exactly as before,
powering off unexpectedly - cannot pin down what applications were
running at the time, but it seems so random that there is no specific
application related clue.
One thing I suspect is to do with all the video driver packs that I
have installed to help deal with the video editing and TV card
(Hauppauge) things that I want to do.
So can anyone help me with some general (or even specific) pointers for
discovering what drivers may be in conflict? I'm sure that the driver
packs that I downloaded from Doom and other places contain far more
drivers than I really need but how do I find out which ones I really
need and which ones I can dump?

Thaks for any help,

paulg7083
 
And what is shown in Event logs?
Presumably when you installed win you also installed mobo chipset and other
drivers from manu sites and NOT win update?
 
Event logs show nothing.

Please clarify your 2nd paragraph - do you mean motherboard chipset
drivers and drivers directly from the manufacturer? If that is the
case, then I installed the motherboard software as included with the
motherboard. Other drivers are a mixture of manufacturers, windows and
video driver packs/codecs that seemed necessary to view video files
downloaded frrom the internet.

Thanks,

Paul
 
It is NOT advisable to use win update for any drivers, or even default win
drivers when these are available from the manu.
Winupdate has been known to supply corrupt drivers and version # may differ
from manu driver.
Win default drivers are usually 'basic' drivers that may not have the full
functionality of manu drivers.
 
Alexander SPK is a great tool for finding the cause of a system crash,
especially if it's a driver, which it usually is. But, it is not free.
Your "repair shop" may have this tool in their arsenal, ask.

However, the cure for any trouble once you've found it is to upgrade the
driver, assuming one is even available; A-SPK won't "fix" your problem.
So you might want to just methodically update or reinstall your drivers
one by one and see/hope it goes away. Start with any drviers that are not
WHQL listed.

The other most likely cause of random system crashes is either RAM errors
or PS problems. memtest86+ can be used to validate the ram.

A Long Shot: I have had this work once for me, but it's a long shot - in
the windows/inf folder there are a whole lot of *.PNF files. These are
the .INF files that your system actually uses, precompiled. The PNF files
are "loaded" at startup time, rather than parsing thru the INF's each
time. If one should become corrupt it can F** things up. Try CUTing all
the .PNF files out of that folder, saving in a temp folder (just in case),
and rebooting. All PNFs that are required will be rebuilt by reparsing
the INFs. You can junk the temp old copies at that point (or compare them
if you'd like to digg deeper).
 
Thanks for the info - Device Manager does not show any question marks.

And that is really the root of my problem - the tech says I have a
driver conflict but Device Manager says all is OK.

Paul
 
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