04-17-2012, 10:33 PM

I have a macbook pro running snow leppard and dual booted with windows 7. Can anyone tell me how to diagnose my mac to see if i have a hardware problem. For some reason it crashes when I am running windows. It seems to happen when I am using IE 9. The screen will go black and will not respond. The keyboard is still lit but that is all. I have to hold start button to restart. I am a rookie at doing diagnostics. Would appreciate some advise.

04-17-2012, 11:03 PM

A model and year would be nice also how much ram is installed?

04-17-2012, 11:16 PM

I bought it in Oct 2010, I have 8 gb of memory

04-18-2012, 02:20 AM

It sounds like it may be a video driver problem in Windows 7. Try updating your video driver while running in Windows 7. Go to your graphics chipset maker's web site and download their latest drivers for Windows 7. For example: ATI, nVidia.

04-18-2012, 06:20 PM

That is exactly what it sounds like to me because of that error message. If true, the OP might want to do a fresh VM install and NOT use the Win7 partition as the basis for it.

Cheers

04-18-2012, 08:18 PM

I downloaded the latest driver for the nVidia 300m that is installed on my laptop. I did not see Sammy Slim's reply until after i installed it. It gave me the option to update the driver or do a clean instal. I selected update. So far I have not had a issue. I will let you know if i do. Thank you both for your help.

04-19-2012, 06:29 PM

I am having the same problem still. Should I reinstall the latest video driver using the clean install option?

04-19-2012, 08:32 PM

Originally Posted by techforay

I am having the same problem still. Should I reinstall the latest video driver using the clean install option?

You can try it but I'm not sure it will make any difference. Also... while in Windows 7 run the Boot Camp software update and download any and all updates for Boot Camp from Apple.

If you're still having problems post back and we can try something else.

04-20-2012, 02:25 PM

I am still having the same problem. Now it happened when I was using Firefox so apparently it is not a IE9 thing

04-20-2012, 03:22 PM

Usually that problem is not caused by the browser you're using. Try starting Windows 7 in Safe Mode: Press F8 during the boot cycle. That will load a generic VGA driver. The display will look bad but let's do that to see if it will black out on you as before. That should tell us about whether the correct video driver was being loaded or not.

04-20-2012, 03:32 PM

I will assume the safe mode with networking is ok so i can cruise the internet. That is when the issue shows up unless that is just by chance.

04-20-2012, 11:34 PM

Yes, go ahead and try Safe Mode with networking so you can access the internet to test it.

04-22-2012, 01:38 PM

This issue does not seem to be ocuring in safe mode. What now?

04-22-2012, 02:21 PM

Originally Posted by techforay

This issue does not seem to be ocuring in safe mode. What now?

It takes us back to square one: Your video driver is either not the correct one or something is corrupt. When in safe mode Windows loads a generic video driver, however, when in normal mode the video driver reverts to whatever you have installed.

You may have to reinstall Windows 7. When you first ran the Boot Camp assistant from OS X (during the Windows 7 install) were you told to download a driver image from Apple? The reason I ask is I'm not sure if the 2010 models like the 2011\2012 models need the additional driver image from Apple to correctly install Windows 7.