I’ve been using 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium on this
computer for 3 years. Until last August I did not install any
updates. At that time I installed Service Pack-1 from CD.
No other updates.
At about the time I installed SP-1, Windows began crashing
occasionally when I scroll a window using the mouse on the
vertical thumb slider. I’m pretty sure it only happens when
I scroll upward, not down. It happens most often in Internet
Explorer 8, but it has happened in some other programs, such
as my graphics drawing program. I don’t recall that it has
ever happened in my text editing program, and it has never
happened in Windows Explorer.
I will scroll a window down, and — sometimes — as soon as I
start to scroll back up, the video goes black and the computer
fans go to full speed.
I press the reset button to restart the computer. And there is
an odd behavior when I do.
Normally, say if I press the reset button while Windows is
running, the fans will go to full speed for a moment and then
slow down to normal speed, and the power-on self-test begins.
When a scroll-initiated crash occurs the fans go to full speed.
When I then hit the reset button the fans momentarily slow,
then go to full full speed again, then slow again, then go to full
speed yet again before finally slowing to normal speed, and
the POST begins. I’ve never seen this happen in any other
situation.
Has anyone else experienced scroll crash?
Anyone have a good idea where the problem could be?
— Jeff, in Minneapolis
In every other way, the default Windows 7 video driver seemed to
be adequate, so I hadn’t installed the proprietary driver. Installing
it more than six weeks ago stopped the scroll-crashes completely.
— Jeff, in Minneapolis