Windows 7 computer, what do you mean you're "dumping memory"?

What have you not seen, the blue screen or the "dumping memory"?

Blue screen is a system crash. In my experience these are fairly rare in Windows 7, and usually indicate you have a bad or outdated device driver, or perhaps failing hardware (like memory).

"Dumping memory" is something windows does after a crash if dumping has been enabled. Go to control panel, system, and click "advanced system settings" in the upper left. In the pop up window that comes up, click "Settings" under Startup and Recovery. Towards the bottom you'll see the settings of what kind of memory dump is enabled and the name of the dump file. Microsoft uses these to diagnose problems and improve windows.

You might find that Microsoft has already diagnosed your problem. Go to control panel, Action Center, and under Maintenance there may be a "check for solutions". This can upload the dump files and other information for Microsoft to analyze to see if it matches a known problem. If so, it can tell you what is wrong and suggest a solution.

the problem is most likely the a grafics card driver . If you opdated the grafics driver, some new drivers can cause it and some old ones. the easyest way to fix it is to disable it in control panel , and tjek if thats helps. Just an experince i have seen on more than one pc . Somtimes you can fix it by installing an older driver.

This answer is another good one. I would definitely check out the action center.

I have the same dumping as Judy, it has happen 3 time this week Why ?
Should I do a recover and start fresh ? I have window 7

I was working on a clients computer once that had getting this Blue Screen at random times. It turned out to be the power supply. Once a new power supply was installed, there was no more Blue Screen. I would have to say that the majority of Blue Screens are the result of hardware failure, or in the case of a power supply...a slow hardware failure.
Yes sometimes it can be a software issue, but if a PC is not getting the stable, needed power to run all the components are the required electic specs, the result will be either the PC randomly shuts itself off, or you get the dreaded Blue Screen. That's my take on the isuue.

I looked up your PC and the web site says: "professional graphics from ATI? and NVIDIA?"

One of the first problems I had with my high-tech Win 7 Ultimate x64 PC was related to NVIDIA graphics drivers - it caused hangs/crashes/reboots. Luckily, the admin logs Win 7 keeps helped pinpoint the trouble and I updated the graphics drivers from the Video Card manufacturer - problem solved. Since yours is a DELL, check the Dell web site for updated graphics drivers first - some OEM's have quirky hardware/software deals with the graphics card makers.

The other problem I had was caused by the 'sleep mode setting' (power settings). A software module of AVG was not waking up, and the system would hang (by the neck until dead - reboot). So, I use a different anti-virus program now AND I disabled power savings modes, just in case some other software has a similar problem. Again, the adim logs win 7 keeps helped me find the problem software.

I suspect, like so many others here, that your problem is the graphics card drivers since it happens at certain websites and when playing games, both of which can be graphically challenging and cause the graphics card GPU and drivers to kick in, and the problem arise. If the updated drivers don't solve the issue, you could try setting the display properties to a lower resolution default - see the graphics card/software manual to figure out how to do that (on-line somewhere no doubt).

But don;t be afraid to change the power mode options to "high performance" just in case (Control Paanle-Hardware and Sound-Power Options)

This has to be the best answer on this entire thread! I had my company try to replace my video adapter with an NVIDIA and it couldn't even pass the sound through the HDMI port! This despite what the tech articles at HP said and the fact that we did put the drivers for it on the motherboard sound card.

However, even my ATI card BSOD'd rarely, until I got the new CCC from ATI/AMD. This new driver works very well, it even solved some screen size problems.

I was the first to reply to this question. Now my problem seems to have vanished, after months of incessant computer crashes. My IT person updated the video drivers for me. But I am not sure that entirely fixed the problem, because I had another crash a few days later. But when I stopped plugging in my many years old Maxtor portable back-up drive, I have not had any further problems and can work in peace. Maybe I should just update its driver, I don't know, but I am picking up a new Seagate external drive later today that is made for Win7 (my operating system), and hope that will be that!

your assessment seems accurate to me.

Unlikely!

Just be aware the Seagate USB drives all have a problem with waking up from sleep mode in Win7 - it usually pops an error "unrecognised usb device" .. consequentially you have to pull the HDD's power plug for a moment (every time). Once the power is back on all is okay again.

I thought Microsoft put out an update for this issue.

...for my 1TB Seagate Expansion and reading their forum it's not any better. Maybe after SP1 who knows? It's not a real bad issue just two things to remember:

1) If the Seagate is standby-sleeping (light slowly flashing) and you want to shutdown/restart 7 wake up the drive first, access any files on it, or you wait a long time for the Seagate to sleep-respond significantly delaying (~2 minutes) the shutdown/restart.

2) when 7 itself waking up from sleep the drive is not recognised - pull the small power pin-plug from the hdd case, wait until spin stop, then plug in again and the drive will connect properly.

not as bad as it sounds

I have now had the 1 TB Seagate Go portable external drive for a couple of days, for my desktop office computer, to replace the old Maxtor drive that apparently was causing the almost daily problem that is the topic of this forum. Um, I am not having any problems. Should I?

Their forum list quite a number of complaints for the *Expansion* series.. that's what I got here and I see the problems.

When GO is fine, fine!

have a lot of driver problems on sleep or standby issues. Thanks for your replies!

Maybe my lack of knowledge is my salvation. So, I've got this little Go drive from Seagate sitting next to me. It is plugged into a USB port on my desktop computer, so it receives its power from a big device that is always plugged in. If my computer goes to sleep (ie, the screensaver comes on), the light inside the Go drive blinks. If I reactivate my computer with the touch of the Enter button, the Go drive's light turns steady. I have no trouble backing up files from the computer to the Go drive anytime I want.
If I turn off the computer, the Go drive's light turns off. I detach the Go drive and put it away before shutting the office for the day (to avoid theft), reattach it in the morning after I boot up the computer.
The situation is just fine with me (and no further blue screen memory dump crashes). Am I operating the 1 TB drive as it is supposed to be intended?

The only two devices I've had externally are a self powered MCard module and a blue tooth USB adapter for a wireless HTC keyboard/mouse combo. My MCard module never went to sleep, and it wakes my Media Center PC from the module. I presume this is because the cable company needs to keep an eye on premium content from the customers so they spy on me a lot. The module wakes my PC up using technology no different that say, a PXE signal from an Ethernet port. The other device was dead on sleep mode activation, however it was USB powered.

I'm not sure about the whole USB power management standard, so you got me there. But I do know that the wireless keyboard would fail after wake up every time. The Vista SP2 update solved the problem, but I got rid of it anyway. I still get other failures occasionally on wake-up with other internal/external hardware.

From what I've seen its almost always cheap RAM upgrades or RAM that requires specific voltage for the timing selected (esp if you use lower latency timings). Of course pushing the limits on RAM with overclocking could be another culprit

The RAM wasn't cheap, but it is OC'd- any RAM running over 1333Mhz is OC'd.

I just want to add that I have had a couple clients lately who had this exact same thing happen. Turned out in both cases it was a malware program causing the issue. Very tricky. The only way I could remove it was to use system restore since both had gotten it and then called right away. It was a simple fix and they've been fine ever since.

Really like your reply, not probably the best solution if you really need to use Windoze for something (many games wont run under Linux, even under WINE), but good reply. Btw I like Linux too, host my website on a Linux server 'cos it's more stable, but still need to use Windoze for various things that Linux just can't do.

I have an extensive Unix background and Linux may work for you to surf the internet but you probably have no idea how to do anything else with it from the command line. Most people think Linux is great just because it's free, so good luck with it. PS: Does it have a good spelling checker, hee hee.