My laptop frequently blue screens and gives a "DPC Watchdog

>>354143
That's a driver error: the driver was supposed to hand control back to the microkernel, but it didn't, so the microkernel killed everything (it's not possible to continue after a kernel error, because there's no way to know the kernel memory isn't corrupted, and the kernel soldiering on and corrupting your filesystem is generally considered worse than the kernel just bluescreening.)

What you need to do is work out what driver it is that's doing this (it's usually obvious from the filename), and then either remove it, disable it, or update it.

>The audio also corrupts, characterized by an unpleasant tendency for sounds to loudly repeat at the exact moment the system freezes.
This is called "motorboating" and is expected behaviour. Soundcards use what's called a "circular buffer": they read a section of memory from start to finish, and when they get to the end they start back at the beginning. When the computer isn't crashed, it follows behind the soundcard, replacing the memory pages it's already played with new pages for it to play. When the computer's crashed, it stops doing this, but doesn't tell the soundcard to shut up, so it just keeps playing the same buffer over and over forever. There's nothing wrong with your sound card, they all do this in this circumstance.

>>354156
I think it was caused by a driver related to my graphics card called "atikmdag.sys." I'm scared to try to update this driver because I tried to do it a month ago and I fucked it up bad enough I had to reinstall Windows. Is this irrational? Should I go for it?

>>354162
Do you have an external drive? Make a system image backup and burn a Windows 10 install USB now, and if it ends up fucked up, you can restore to exactly the way it was it in less than ten clicks.

>>354168
I don't own one. Last time I tried, I think I may have just given up too quickly. I tried to update my "AMD Radeon R6 Graphics" driver and it seemed to take much longer than any other driver I had manually updated. The screen went black during that process and I assumed that something wrong, so I tried manually restarting the computer, which probably botched whatever installation was going on and rendered the computer useless until I wiped it and reinstalled Windows. Wiping it wasn't a big deal as I had just bought it in May and have nothing meaningful on it, but it was a hassle. If I'm updating that driver, how long should it take?

File: image.jpg (61KB, 834x476px) Image search: [Google]

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>>354171
It shouldn't take that long.

But also, it should create a restore point before it installs a driver, so you should be able to go Repair-->Advanced Options-->System Restore.

>>354143
i would just do a fresh install of windows 7 or maybe xp imo