[In progress] Watchdog.sys BSOD

Hi everybody!

Thought I'd register here and tell about something odd that has been happening these last days:

My system is a freshly installed WinXP SP3 with everything updated and working, hardware included, but lately I have gotten surprise BSODs (which basically never happens to me) where this watchdog.sys is mentioned. On all occasions of this I have been running the latest version of JDownloader, surfing the internet (with firefox ), and just used the computer normally. But suddenly the computer freezes, stay frozen for a few seconds, and then it bluescreens. On at least one of these occasions I am certain I was watching videos on youtube, but I don't think I was when all of the BSODs happened.

I googled around for info, and found several suggestions that the problem is linked to Flash Player and it's use of hardware acceleration (I have a Geforce GTX9800) and that one should turn hardware acceleration off in the flash player settings. I did this, and then I uninstalled/reinstalled all adobe plugins, Java and the graphic drivers.I did this yesterday, and I have not had anything happen yet.

What is strange is that this never happened before, the NVidia v275.33 WHQL drivers have been out for a while and the Java JRE update 1.6.0 build 26 too, but as I said the BSODs started happening just this last week.

I just thought I would tell you about this, all input is appreciated!

[Jiaz]

Java itself cannot cause a BSOD. the crash is caused by watchdog.sys
i suggest to check for this file and ask google. maybe do a system fix. also try to upgrade hardware/graphic drivers

Thanks for reply!

As I wrote above, I have already done all that before writing here. Nothing wrong with my software or hardware. The BSOD is something that just recently started happening out of the blue, so to speak, and were the first in some 3 years. And on all occasions the JDownloader software was running.

I remember that my 24/1 connection was maxed when it happened last time, about 3meg/sec down and some 50kB/sec up. If this info can be a piece of the puzzle perhaps?

Keep up the good work!
/Santa

It's possible that java (indirectly) calls one of your drivers in a way that no other application on your computer does, but that doesn't mean java is the cause. The cause is a malfunctioning driver, hardware or graphics card.

You should check whether all your drivers have been updated.

I recommend to :-

1) switch off direct3d by starting jD with JDownloaderD3D.exe ("**External links are only visible to Support Staff**) or use "java -Xmx512m -Dsun.java2d.d3d=false -jar JDownloader.jar";

2) replace your java with a more stable version, like JRE (1.)6 update 21. See "**External links are only visible to Support Staff**.

Thank you for your advice, but yet again: see what I wrote above There ARE NO malfunctioning hardware in my system. If it had been, then it should have manifested in other problems during my daily use. But I always keep everything in top shape and very rarely have errors. Until now, when I was very surprised by a bluescreen using JDownloader

The other advice you give are too technical for me and installing old drivers is nothing I have ever needed to do.

Wait I did it ONE time, when I reverted to uTorrent 1.8.5 But that is another topic

[tony2long]

Watchdog.sys is used to record display driver-related errors, assertions, warnings, and events to a log in memory. Why do you suspect JD?

Because I have never had any errors on this particular computer before I started using JDownloader on it.

As Jiaz wrote and I totally agree with him on that point, java cannot cause a crash of your operating system. java is totally separated from your hardware drivers because it runs in a virtual machine. If you're interested you can read a book about java's technical architecture.

As I wrote before - but I'll give some more details - the other applications running on your computer might not need the drivers or call those drivers indirectly with a different parameter signature or combination of parameter values.

I never wrote to install old drivers as you should always have the most recent drivers for your hardware. Instead, I suggested to replace your version of java with a potentially more stable one. BTW, I don't know what you're currently running.

If you see any hs_err_pid* files in jD's program folder, please show them.

[Jiaz]

i get 149k results when i google for watchdog.sys and bluescreen i would start there