WSOD

[Target]

anyone here have any experience with the 'White Screen of Death' phenomenon?

Running win7 x32 on my work laptop, I get random WSOD's throughout the day.  They seem to centre around office apps (excel, outlook) and the browser (IE, firefox,greenbrowser) and can last anywhere from 10 seconds to a total lockup.

Googling turns up plenty, though nothing of apparent value - most occurrences seem to be at boot, and no one seems to be able identify the cause or provide a definitive fix

I'd really like to solve this as it's really starting to piss me off

anyone?

[f0dder]

Daheck is a WSOD? Don't think I've ever seen one?

[Target]

Daheck is a WSOD? Don't think I've ever seen one?

white is the new blue

in my case, the screen goes semi opaque (white) and the 'application(s)' lockup

from talking to my colleagues it seems to be a fairly common experience, google seems to back that up

[f0dder]

Hm, the *entire* screen? And does the entire system lock up, or "just" the applications? What about the mouse cursor? Can you take a picture next time it happens?

[Target]

Hm, the *entire* screen? And does the entire system lock up, or "just" the applications? What about the mouse cursor? Can you take a picture next time it happens?

let's agree on the entire 'window'.  I pretty much run most everything fullscreen all the time, so it's effectively fullscreen.

When it occurs, it usually locks 'the applications' - usually it will take out a couple of apps (eg the browser AND excel AND outlook, sometimes others as well (eg TC, 1x1).  I can toggle to some other app's but I might have limited access, or the functional apps could be annexed by the WSOD...

Office is prominent as it's at the centre of most of my workday () but it might or might not be relevant

[f0dder]

Hm, does the entire window go white, or is it more like the app freezes and the window decoration (borders, min/max icons etc) reverts to something that looks win3.x style?

[tomos]

I dont use MS Office, nor any other office soft much -
this possibly not much help:

I've seen this behaviour a lot in Firefox on Win7 - window fades out & does not respond - I *am* able to alt-tab to other apps. I'm also able to reproduce it once after each FF restart (it seems to be related to a particular plugin) - it recovers after 10 to 20 seconds. It's actually a minor problem for me so I havent bothered following up on it.

Hm, does the entire window go white, or is it more like the app freezes and the window decoration (borders, min/max icons etc) reverts to something that looks win3.x style?

not sure what 3.x looks like - here it's like a transparent white overlay on top of the window - or a faded-out version of window.


edit/ tried to reproduce it for a screenshot and of course it doesnt work now - maybe it requires a reboot - whill check in the moring.

[Target]

the entire window goes white, including all borders, scroll bars, menu bars, and other sundry decorations

on other thing I just remembered - if I call task manager when it happens, it doesn't respond (display) till the thaw....

[Target]

I've seen this behaviour a lot in Firefox on Win7 - window fades out & does not respond - I *am* able to alt-tab to other apps. I'm also able to reproduce it once after each FF restart (it seems to be related to a particular plugin) - it recovers after 10 to 20 seconds. It's actually a minor problem for me so I havent bothered following up on it.

not sure what 3.x looks like - here it's like a transparent white overlay on top of the window - or a faded-out version of window.

I wondered whether it was related to a particular app, but I can't say categorically.  I've played around with alternatives where I can but it doesn't seem to make much difference.  I also wondered whether it mightn't be a dodgy bit of hardware, but given that I'm getting similar stories from my colleagues I'm inclined to think not...

and you're description matches mine

[f0dder]

Oh, sounds like what happens when a program's GUI thread doesn't pump messages in a timely manner. This usually only happens with poorly programmed applications that does (too much) work in it's GUI thread.

If it starts happening to programs at random, hmm... not sure. Could perhaps be cause by global windows hooks, or perhaps bad some bad anti-malware stuff.

[rgdot]

The only white screen I have seen using laptops is connector (or power) related. Flaky connection to LCD. If at boot could mean a power draw it can't handle.

[Target]

or perhaps bad some bad anti-malware stuff.

well, the company does use mcafee

[Target]

The only white screen I have seen using laptops is connector (or power) related. Flaky connection to LCD. If at boot could mean a power draw it can't handle.

I've never had the issue at boot, and while I'm working off a laptop, a lot of my colleagues aren't

[mwb1100]

anyone here have any experience with the 'White Screen of Death' phenomenon?

I get that behavior occasionally (but not nearly the frequency that you mention).  I'm running Win7 x64, and I see such behavior probably not more than once a week.  It typically occurred in Firefox, but sometimes also in Outlook (2007).

I might not see it as much as you do because most of the time I'm in a text editor, serial port terminal window, or a VMware session.

I'm generally reluctant to upgrade software, so until recently I was running some old version of Firefox (I can't remember what version exactly, but something in the 4.x - 11.x range, I think).  I always assumed that the problem was either because of FF or because of antivirus software.  

I restart my Windows box pretty much only when absolutely necessary (usually due to updates) about once a month, and Firefox maybe once every couple weeks.  I also keep about 50 tabs open in FF.  So by the time I'd restart FF, it would often have gotten pretty slow and be chewing up a huge chunk of memory.  The AV on this machine (it's managed by an IT department - also it's McAfee  ) also has various processes that seem to occasionally peg a CPU core, so I have to use task manager to kill those every now and again.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I always assumed that the "WSOD" problem was either FF or AV instability.  As a side note, FF 17.x is a big improvement stability-wise so far.

[Curt]

surely, if you are running a laptop, you must have the opportunity to exit the security program(s), and test if things are improving by this way. Your problem #sounds# like the one I had some years ago when my Agnitum Outpost / Eset NOD32 security combination wasn't working well together.

Also, it sounds as if the laptop needs some more / new / better memory.

[f0dder]

Also, wild guesses here, but perhaps could be related to GDI object leaks or (perhaps a bit less likely?) desktop heap memory size.

[Target]

surely, if you are running a laptop, you must have the opportunity to exit the security program(s), and test if things are improving by this way. Your problem #sounds# like the one I had some years ago when my Agnitum Outpost / Eset NOD32 security combination wasn't working well together.

Also, it sounds as if the laptop needs some more / new / better memory.

one might think so, unfortunately this is a corporate environment so users are locked out of a lot of things 'for their own safety'

I should think 4G would be sufficient for most non graphical operations (actually, isn't that the hard limit for x32 win7?)

Also, wild guesses here, but perhaps could be related to GDI object leaks or (perhaps a bit less likely?) desktop heap memory size.

ce?

interesting that this seems to be new to most here, especially given that it appears to be a relatively common occurrence (at least according to google, and they wouldn't lie about it, would they?)

[fenixproductions]

or perhaps bad some bad anti-malware stuff.

well, the company does use mcafee

Try to change its settings.

I had WinXP and McAfee on old work laptop and it also was going fully white sometimes:


I don't recall exactly how I fixed it (although it was before new hardware) but I know I played with antivirus configuration.

[cranioscopical]

I get the white-screen phenomenon on W7-64. I thought it was just my machine.

For me, the blight seems to occur most often in DOpus when trying to scroll fast through panes of directories. Directory sizes are being calculated on the fly. It's not limited to DOpus and sometimes (but seldom) it clears itself.

@Target anything useful in the logs?

[barney]

Hm-m-m ... I may be experiencing the same thing - or at least something similar.

I'm currently using MyInfo as a recording PIM.  On a regular basis it whites out, and only time will revive it (five to fifteen minutes).  At times, during this white-out, the screen cursor is totally immovable, but that normally lasts only a short period.

Diagnostics don't tell me anything, nor do any of the analysis softwares I've run.  I've pretty well traced it down to MyInfo saving the open databases & making backups thereof.  Still trying to analyze, so I disabled the automatic backups - has made a significant difference, but has not eliminated the problem.  (I do get a not responding in the title bar.)

After the initial lockup (period variable), I can get to other software that is open, or even open new software.  Eventually, MyInfo wakes up and everything seems kosher again.  Dunno if any of this will help, but you might take a look at what the software is doing - or supposed to be doing - when the WSOD occurs.

Oh, this is on Win7 Ulitmate 64-bit, i7 CPU, 6.00 GB RAM, Toshiba Satellite laptop.  MyInfo is, to the best of my knowledge, 32-bit.

[fenixproductions]

I am starting to be sure that this is anti-stuff issue.
Lot of protection apps try to access (unpack) archives on file read into memory which may slow everything else down.

I've just checked my Comodo suite (enabled packed files deep scanning) and it truly freezes my PC.
Tested with Total Commnder/XYplorer and folders with lot of packed files. Of course, I had to remove their executables from exclusions list.

[Target]

@Target anything useful in the logs?

nope, at least nothing means anything to me

though looking at the timestamps i don't see anything that looks like a potential culprit

[Target]

what's becoming apparent is this is reasonably common, and not specific to an application, or even an application genre

which would tend to point to the OS?

[40hz]

Sounds like either a video driver issue or a program bug stomping on explorer.exe. You'll also sometimes also get that when explorer goes out looking for nonexistent network drives. If killing and then reinvoking explorer.exe process using TaskManager clears the WSOD it's definitely an explorer issue.

[SKA]

Target ,

Is WSOD linked to graphics card type : ATI or Nvidia ?
I guess its antimalware - graphic driver interaction, esp Nvidia.
I think it may not happen with ATI cards.

Ska