Solved BSODs at boot time, usually boots normally after 3 reboots and repairs

[gaspodeagain]

Here's a more typical boot up experience:
FIRST BOOT
1. 09:42 - Booting
2. 09:42 - Crash - MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION

SECOND BOOT
1. Windows boots in diagnostics mode
2. Windows starts memory diagnostics
3. Windows finished memory diagnostics (apparently without finding any issues) and reboots.
4. 09:55 - BSOD. MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION again.
5. Windows reboots.

THIRD BOOT
1. Windows "Preparing automatic repair".
2. Windows attempts another round of memory diagnostics
3. Windows finished memory diagnostics (apparently without finding any issues) and reboots.

FOURTH BOOT
1. Windows boots without problems

Also, attached logs for yesterdays and todays installation and booting attempts.

 

[Dave76]

I think it's a hardware problem, CPU and/or RAM.
Since the OEM BIOS won't let you change the settings, there's not much you can do.

Did you disable everything except Anti-Virus from Startup?

Disable Turbo boost?

Which graphics driver are you using?
Looks like you're not alone.
Take a look at this thread: Windows 8 & HP Envy 15 1Gen not working together.
There are three fixes that users say work, the last one is on the last post.
Also at this HP site: Envy 15 1060ea - Windows 8 Installation Problem

 

[gaspodeagain]

haha, well, if you look at the previous page, I mentioned I had a couple more ideas. Those forums you linked two were exactly where I got those ideas.

So yeah, I'm going to investigate that display driver trail for a while, and see if one of the suggested solutions works, or - if not - if I can figure out something on my own. I have a growing suspicion that that might be the root cause.

As for turbo boost, I don't think the 1099 eo supports that. Nor do I belive any normal programs running during startup can explain all of this either.

 

[gaspodeagain]

I can confirm that the problem seems to be caused by the display driver.

I installed one of the unofficial drivers from leshcatlabs.net, but it doesn't work. But - at least - windows understand that it doesn't work, and disables it. (Warnings signs in device manager, etc) I've had no crashes since I installed it yesterday. I probably can't do any serious gaming or stuff like that without a proper driver, but at least I can boot. I'll take booting over gaming any day.

All my previous drivers have been official ones from either Microsoft or NVidia, all of which windows claimed to work, but which presumably caused all the issues I've been describing here so far.

If I were to buy a new laptop right now, it probably wouldn't be a HP. I don't think it's completely unreasonable of me to expect HP to provide a proper driver for Windows 8 - new versions of windows isn't released that often, nor without warning. Yes, I am a bit annoyed right now.

Two things I've found that doesn't work:
Yesterday I tried to install Windows 7 + the original driver that works there, then upgrade to Windows 8. Despite telling the windows 8 setup program not to update any drivers, it decided it knew better and installed its own anyway. That worked about as well as you might expect.

Installing the Windows 7 driver in Windows 8 simply doesn't work. Windows claims it can't recognize any relevant HW, and refuses. I might give this another shot if I can figure out how to bypass the setup program and install the driver from the .inf file, but that requires some more research.

I'm not sure if I actually need any more help here at this point. Should I mark this issue as solved, or would it be preferable if I waited to see if I can actually get a working driver installed, and then write up a quick how-to?

In any case, I really appreciate the help and suggestions you've given me here. This will definitely be my go-to forum for these kinds of problems in the future, and I'll recommend it to anyone else I know that run into similar issues.

Edit: Spelling. I've not had that many beers yet.

 

[Dave76]

Glad you have narrowed down the cause.

Don't blame you at all, if that happened to my laptop I would be very annoyed with the OEM.
They seem to be un-responsive to a large set of customers, that is not acceptable.

You have found the problem but, not been able to get it resolved by the OEM. If you do find a way to get around the issue or HP finally produces a fix, then it could be marked 'Solved'.

I wish you the best luck in finding a solution to this regrettable problem, please let us know if you do find the answer. It will help many others with the same laptop.

It's been a pleasure working through this problem with you, just wish it could have been resolved.
Looking forward to your replies here.

 

[gaspodeagain]

Finally got it working, thanks to this: https://marceloazuma.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/windows-8-on-hp-envy-15-1050nr/

Quick steps:
1. Install Windows 8. Keep trying until it installs and boots into windows once.
2. Download the driver from ATI Mobility Radeon HD Series Video/Graphics Driver HP Envy 15-1050nr Notebook PC | HP® Support
3. Run the .exe so that it extracts to "C:\swsetup\SP48247". Cancel the installation process.
4. Go to the same folder, right click "setup.exe", and set compatiblity mode to "Windows 7".
5. Run the .exe and install the drivers without problem.

Marcelos original text, in case the blogpost ever goes down:

-------------------------------------
I have finally successfully installed Windows 8 on my HP Envy 15-1050nr, a machine bought in March, 2010, and upgraded to 16GB of RAM and an SSD.

Trying to install Windows 8 since from the first beta release, it always crashed with a CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT error message on the Blue Screen of Death.

This error was not exclusive to Windows 8, since I always got it when trying to upgrade to the latest ATI display driver for the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 display adapter, on Windows 7 too.

So what I did to make Windows 8 work properly?

I figured out that a clean install was usually successful, and I could use it properly, but always crashed after the first reboot, and was unrepairable.

So I decided to make a clean install and try to use the official HP’s latest display driver for it, made for Windows 7. The driver is available here: ATI Mobility Radeon HD Series Video/Graphics Driver HP Envy 15-1050nr Notebook PC | HP® Support

The sequence I made:

1. Windows 8 clean install, using with a USB key prepared with the “Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool”, available here: Microsoft Store Online

2. Installed the HP’s display driver sp48247.exe described above

a. Running in default mode, it did not let me install the driver, so I set it to Windows 7 compatibility mode

b. The sp48247.exe expands to “C:\swsetup\SP48247”, so I changed the compatibility mode for the setup.exe file at this folder. It can be done by right clicking the file, selecting properties, then compatibility tab, and checking the option “Run this program in compatibility mode” and selecting Windows 7

c. Run the setup.exe above and installed the display driver

That’s it.
--------------------------------------

Again, thanks for all the great help. I'll mark this thread as solved now. Finally.

 

[Dave76]

Great news.
Endeavor to Persevere

You're welcome, glad you found a fix, this should be helpful to others.