Checking Drivers - Common Commands

Checking Drivers - What To Do?

Drivers are the main cause for BSODs, however, mostly BSODs will not point out directly to the driver causing the problem. There are some basic principles you should follow when checking for any problematic or outdated drivers. Firstly, make sure you update your drivers on a regular basis, join a forum or visit the driver's website to ensure you have the most stable and up to date drivers for your hardware; remember drivers - especially graphics cards - can improve the performance of your hardware.


A great tool for checking for problematic drivers is Driver Verifier.

Common Commands:

lm - 

The lm command is used to load listed driver modules at the time of the crash. A name of the module and a timestamp for each module are not included. This is useful for checking for known problematic drivers.

lmtsm - 

This command is very similar to the lm command, although more information is displayed for the driver modules, loaded at the time of the crash. The name of the module and the timestamp will also be included. This command is very useful when checking for very outdated or known problematic drivers.

lmvm - 

This command can be used to find detailed information about a specified module, such as timestamp, address, checksum, module name and directory in which it is stored.

Syntax:

lmvm [Module Name]

*Note* Remember to leave out the file extension from the module name e.g. .sys