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I have a Sony laptop which originally came with Windows Vista. So, later when I changed OS to Windows 7, I had to find windows 7 version of drivers for my graphics card, but that version was never released. So I instead installed windows 7 graphic drivers from a similar laptop that I found on internet.

Now for the most part everything works correctly, but sometimes when I watch videos I will get blue screen of death(BSoD) due to the, I guess, incorrect version of the graphics driver. I get BSoD about once every two days.

My question is:
If I continue like this, how probable is it that all these BSoDs will cause damage to my laptop? And what kind of damage can happen?

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    You may be experiencing overheating. When was the last time you cleaned dust and debris from the intake and exhaust vents? Are all heat-sinks and fans clear of debris? Does the system fan spin freely? Dec 11, 2011 at 18:44
  • Why not just fix the problem? Have you tried compatibility mode? What BSOD error? Dec 11, 2011 at 20:18
  • @techie007 The laptop was cleaned a year ago, and I don't think it is about overheating because it only BSoDs when I watch videos or play video games.
    – Sunny88
    Dec 11, 2011 at 21:20
  • @TomWijsman I didn't record the error, I think it is different file every time. I can't fix the problem other than changing OS back to vista. My graphics card has no proper drivers for windows 7.
    – Sunny88
    Dec 11, 2011 at 21:22
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    @Sunny88: You can find those errors back in your event log. These events also link to dump files that can be used for further troubleshooting... Dec 11, 2011 at 21:24

3 Answers 3

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Registry corruption is one of the damage that you can get, another damage that you can get is corruption of some filesystem block.

Update your driver with a correct version .

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    Eventually, one will happen at just the right time to corrupt either the registry or the Master File Table. You're getting by because Windows 7 is far more resilient and has a journalling system inherited from Windows Server 2003 to help recover from dirty shutdowns, but this is for occasional blips, not continuous crashing. It's far easier to fix the driver than deal with the consequences. It's unfortunate that your laptop is a throwaway that hasn't seen a driver update past Vista. Dec 11, 2011 at 17:11
  • @FiascoLabs By saying "fix the driver", do you mean going back to windows vista and using its driver, or do you know some other solution?
    – Sunny88
    Dec 11, 2011 at 21:26
  • If the only stable driver you have is for Vista and Sony can't be bothered to issue an updated one for Windows 7, then you have two options: 1) Go back to Vista or 2) Put up with the crashing and make really frequent backups. Dec 12, 2011 at 0:01
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Corruption is the big word here, your computer is very likely to crash in the middle of a series of file writes. If these writes need to be atomic, eg. they should never be interrupted, then having your computer crash during these writes can result in an inconsistent state. While there are various mechanisms in place for recovering the most obvious corruption; there are types of corruption that need to be solved on demand, or manually, but often require a re-installation because you simply can't find it...

Bottom-line: If you do care about your data, you should definitely get rid of those BSODs...

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You can also use a Vista driver for you laptop if it is available. I find it hard to believe a non-XP driver is not available for your laptop.

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  • I can't install Vista driver on windows 7 because it doesn't allow me to. It says "Wrong OS".
    – Sunny88
    Dec 11, 2011 at 21:24
  • That's odd. Windows 7 supports Vista drivers. I'm not going to recommend overriding it however.
    – surfasb
    Dec 11, 2011 at 21:40
  • There was a short period of time during the Vista-Ready era where drivers like these were released. So, it's not surprising that Windows 7 while supporting well written Vista drivers, might reject these earlier ones. Dec 12, 2011 at 0:03
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    Never heard of that. WDDM 1.1, which is in Windows 7 supports all the 1.0 features. msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/gg487344. If anything, I suspect it is the manufacturer's setup program and not the INF file.
    – surfasb
    Dec 12, 2011 at 0:15

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