DPC Watchdog Violation Issue + Wifi Issues

JosephK_777

Hi there,

I have an Acer laptop I bought in 2014. A couple years after I bought it, it began to have problems where it would freeze and crash. The screen would become unresponsive and the fan would turn on high and cycle on and off until I turned the computer off. The only solution I found to the issue was to restart my computer. This has been going on periodically for years now. It's interesting in that this issue only happens in spurts where it will freeze and crash about 10 times in a row, then it will be completely fine for a while. Sometimes when it crashes it goes to the blue screen (this is not common). It cites a DPC Watchdog Violation as its error code. I've tried to look it up, but my issue doesn't seem to exactly match what I've read online. 

My laptop started also to have wifi issues with a similar pattern (although it's a bit more frequent). I will be on my wifi network, and then my wifi status says "limited." If I take the computer off of the wifi and then put it back on, sometimes it will resolve the issue. Sometimes it won't. At other times, my wifi fails completely; my computer doesn't even recognize that there are wifi networks available, even though there's more than 5 in the area. I restart my computer to see if this fixed the problem. Sometimes this works, but sometimes I have to do it a couple of times before it recognizes wifi.

What's interesting about my issue is that there seems to be little correlation (at least to my knowledge) with what I'm doing at the time on my laptop when these issues occur. It happens when I'm using the internet and when I'm not. It also doesn't seem to be correlated to how long I've been using the computer either. It can happen within a couple minutes or after more than an hour of use. 

I would be so grateful if someone knew what exactly was going on. I will say that I am not super knowledgeable about the intricacies of computers, so if you could put it in laymen's language that would be awesome! Also I am not interested in downloading any software to fix this issue. Have a wonderful day.

JackE

Try the following all at one time.

(1) Uninstall, don't just disable, any non-Microsoft virus scanners like Norton, McAfee, AVG, Malwarebytes, etc. Shutdown. Turn machine back on.

(2) Right click Windows startup icon. Search 'disk cleanup' app. Click cleanup system files button and run.

(3) Open ControlPanel. Search 'button'. Click 'change what the power buttons do' in left pane. Click 'change settings that are currently unavailable. Scroll down and make sure the fast startup box is unchecked.

(4) Shutdown. Then turn the machine back on.

(5) Download and try iobit's DriverBooster freeware to see if it'll pick up any new or alternate device drivers.

Jack E/NJ