Hi, I just wanted to notify you of a bug AND provide my solution to get Speccy to work on my Dell Dimension 8400.
I was frustrated yesterday when everytime I launched Speccy, it caused a BSOD.
It says it was caused inside of ntoskrnl.exe, but after wasting many hours trying to replace, update, but finally rollback that file, it didn't seem to be the root cause.
I then looked into if it could be a weak CMOS battery issue. Yes, I've had the same factory battery inside that prehistoric desktop (almost 10 years now), so I figured changing it wouldn't hurt. Conveniently, I had the correct coin battery kicking around in my toolbag (model: CR2032, 3V. brand: Energizer [doesn't really matter though]), so I popped open the case, moved my Audio card a bit. I couldn't figure out how to remove the Graphics card without breaking a small green plastic lock that is placed right under the card (near the PCI-slot), but thankfully enough - the Video Card wasn't too much in the way and I could still eject the CMOS battery.
After I got that replaced, I tried Speccy again... NOPE! Still the same problem (although it seems like it was hesitating a bit longer, could just be me).
So I knew among the other files reported in the last MiniDump of my BSOD crash, there was mentioned that "iaStor.sys" could be responsible too. I didn't think it would affect at first, but hey I was wrong!
I went over the Dell Support site, and looks like it was a common error for other Dimension 8400 owners.
There is a new driver for the Intel Matrix Storage found here:
Instructions (however... read below):
http://support.dell....8&isLegacy=true
The download link is here:
ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/SATA/R130119.EXE
NOTE: What they FAIL to say though, is that you can't boot up Windows XP when your BIOS is set in the mode "RAID Autodetect / ATA" (at least I couldn't use it, maybe it's because it was initially installed while "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" was activated).
In summary, all I had to do was:
- Boot-up in SafeMode;
- Install the drivers (from the EXE above);
- Restart, and voila!
When I ran Speccy, bam! All the data populated within a few seconds!
The CMOS Battery replacement may have played a role here, but hard to say really, just try the above iaStor.sys driver-update first before you bother to open your case.
Hopefully this guide can help other people having similar problems. Who knows, it might not only be Dell related!