Dell Studio 17 Blue Screen of Death

For the first time since switching over to Vista, I got a BSOD (Blue screen of death) on my brand new Dell Studio 17 after updating Vista via Microsoft.  Very nice.  After my great experience with the Dell customer support, I decided not to even bother calling them.  After looking around the Interwebs, I came across a post on the Best Buy forum:

http://forums.bestbuy.com/bb/board/message?board.id=Computers_New&thread.id=3137

This post basically explains that the BSOD is caused by the built-in webcam driver which causes a “IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL” fatal error.  To fix this problem, they tell you to download and install a new version of the webcam driver from the Dell website at:

http://ftp.us.dell.com/input/CREATIVE-LABS_INTEGRATED-WEB_A05_R207341.EXE

The self extracting program will automatically uninstall the old driver and install the new driver and reboot your computer.  You must close the webcam driver in order for the installer to finish.  You would think the installer could close the driver for you but I guess that’s asking for too much.

Seeing that ordering a keyboard cover from Dell took 2.5 hours, I figure this BSOD problem probably would have taken about 5 hours to solve over the phone with Dell customer service.  Instead, a few clicks in google, download and I’m done in under 10 minutes.

Boy, these posts are looking more and more like those Apple TV ads.