Downloading symbols for use with windbg when analyzing BSODs with windbg

99 times out of 100, I use BlueScreenView to analyze BSODs.  It's a great program for initial analysis.

If I need to go more in depth, I use windb from here https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/hh852365

However, when you run windbg, you get errors about missing symbols. I read about the fix for the symbold problem here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2008/11/01/how-to-debug-kernel-mode-blue-screen-crashes-for-beginners.aspx

The fix for the symbol error is to type this command at the bottom of the window (part to type in bold):

0: kd>  !symfix
then save the workspace and close and reopen windbg

Now you get no symbol errors when you open the minidump.  Now, you can get get more detail about the BSOD with this command:

0: kd> !analyze -v

analyzing BSOD mini-dumps

This Dell page talks about troubleshooting of BSODs and gives a link near the end to the Windows Debugger and a tutorial on the Windows Debugger to analyze mini-dumps to determine the cause of blue screens of death.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?c=us&l=en&s=bsdr&docid=DSN_356576&isLegacy=true

Word troubleshooting tips

Here's a page with troubleshooting tips for Word problems:

http://www.personal-computer-tutor.com/NNTWord.htm

troubleshooting STOP error messages

I found this helpful page on troubleshooting STOP error messages:

http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm

WLAN driver causes BSOD only on WPA network

I ran into something very strange today. I had a ThinkPad T41 that was getting intermittent blue screens of death. I ran hardware diagnostics, and they all came up with no problems. To make a long story short, I took it home and reformatted it. No more BSODs. Then I brought it back to my client's office, and I got a BSOD every time I booted up the computer - just after I logged in.

It seemed that whenever the wireless LAN card saw a WPA encrypted network (not even connecting to it - just seeing it), it would give this BSOD - about IRQ_less_or_equal (or something like that). I had to disable the WLAN card with the hardware switch (in this case Fn + F5). Then everything worked fine. In the end, I upgraded the driver for the Intel Pro 2100 3B driver (I think that was the model or something close to it). And after that, all was normal. Very strange.