Tricky laptop problem...

Joe42 · 12 Sep 2006 at 14:48

I've been given a laptop to fix and i'm having a bit of a problem.

It comes up with a bsod when it boots, sometime after its logged on.
Usually it seems to be vtdisp.dll which is the via graphics driver, so i've tried a new graphics driver and a new chipset driver, and now i seem to be getting an atapi.sys bsod.
It seems to work ok with graphics hardware acceleration disabled but its a bit random so i can't be sure.
With just the new graphics driver it seemed to work ok in safemode and crash in windows, with the new chipset drivers it seems to give the atapi.sys bsod and crashes in safemode aswell.

The chipset is Via pm880 with integrated via/s3 graphics.
I've tried running memtest as it seems a little random which suggests a memory problem but it passed fine.

Any ideas?

Joe42 · 12 Sep 2006 at 14:56

Mp4 said:
format / repair windows

Hmm i can give that a try i suppose. Anything else i can do without having to do that?

Joe42 · 12 Sep 2006 at 15:03

Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L7300
-Celeron M 1.5
-Via pm880 with s3 graphics
-256mb of ram
-40gb hdd
-Win xp home

Joe42 · 12 Sep 2006 at 15:43

Yep, i'll do that shortly. Thanks

Joe42 · 13 Sep 2006 at 16:20

Driver irql not less or equal

blah blah blah

Stop 0x000000d1 (0x03187cc5,0x0000000D,0x00000000,0xfab0d2d0)

atapi.sys address fab0d2d0 base at fab0c000, datestanm 41107b4d

Hope that means something to ya.

Does anyone know what atapi.sys is?
Before i updated the drivers i got vtdisp.sys which is the via display driver and thats why i updated the graphics and chipset drivers, now i'm getting this other one. I did google it and couldn't find out what it is.

Edit: I was going to use virtual pc to install another copy of windows but tis not even booting now, with graphics ahrdware acceleration disabled. Its always the atapi.sys error.

Joe42 · 14 Sep 2006 at 12:16

Thanks, i've run that and i'll see what it says when the driver crashes. Unfortunately its really for developers to fix buggy drivers which isn't much use to me.

I just need to know what exactly atapi.sys is i'm assuming its chipset driver related... anyone?

Joe42 · 18 Oct 2006 at 11:24

Mp4 said:
format / repair windows

Right, after trying to rescue the data in knoppix (which didn't crash) and failing because it could not mount my usb drive and i couldn't get it to network, i have removed the hard disk, rescued the data and formatted it.

When i install windows, as soon as it gets to the part of setup where it begins to install drivers, about 15 minutes before the end, it crashes and gives a bsod about atapi.sys.
I can tell its at the stage where its installing drivers because the display flicks off an on as it installs the graphics driver.

So i seem to have a hardware fault that only occurs when a driver is installed, possibly the graphics driver, possibly the chipset driver, i'm not sure.

So what do i do now?