Fixed a BSOD

The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), don’t see them much these days, usually due to hardware problems. This was the case recently. Installed a great value new PC in the office from a company selling through Ebay. Loaded Windows 7 64-bit on to it and was very happy with the new PC. However, an occasional BSOD needed tracking down. After reviewing the dump files the finger pointed towards the CD/DVD read/writer. (It you need to look at dump files try the Microsoft Dumpchk.exe utility or BlueScreenView from NirSoft.)

The PC has an ASRock H61M-HVS motherboard, the CD/DVD reader/writer is listed as ATAPI iHAS122 in Device Manager, a Lite-On device I believe. Narrowed the problem down to a GEAR driver used for CD/DVD writing (probably licensed to Microsoft by GEAR). Got the updated GEAR driver from their website http://www.gearsoftware.com/support/drivers.php and installed it. No BSOD since.