Inspiron driver issue?

Question

I have an old Inspiron 1525 that I mainly use for internet. I'm running Windows Vista SP2 32-bit. I know I should upgrade, but it's served its purpose until last month. The problems started suddenly, even though I didn't make any changes that day. I do have an antivirus program that hasn't detected anything since then. Most of the time it just freezes, but I do get the rare blue screen. I've had to use safe mode with networking most days. Sometimes I'll just leave it on for days so it won't freeze when I try to start up. I was able to capture the blue screen details that I'll post below. From what I've gathered, it could be a problem with the wireless driver, but I'm computer illiterate.

STOP: 0x000000D1 (0x000000C1, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0xBE650B5B)

bcmw16.sys - Address 8E650B5B base at 8E64E000, DateStamp 470ff55c

Philip_Yip · Answer

I would advise clean installing Windows Vista as the installation is quite old and is exhibiting some software issues:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/a-clean-install-of-windows/

In particular here:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/a-clean-install-of-windows/windows-vista-installation/

Y0RD0 · Answer

Thanks for the reply. I was hoping to avoid that if it's just a bad driver or two. I'm afraid it would freeze while I'm trying to re-install Windows. Sometimes it won't even let me log on before freezing.

So the blue screen error messages have mostly been DRIVER IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL. but here's an older one that I recorded:

STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0x814F720A, 0x98C94C7C, 0x00000000)

win32k.sys - Address 814F720A base at 81430000 Datestamp 52f4b7a5

Any way to identify the drivers?

Philip_Yip · Answer

Check the F12 preboot diagnostics just in case the hard drive is on its way out: http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/f12-preboot-diagnostics/

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Inspiron driver issue?

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