i got a dual boot and i have problems with my windows xp home installation.
ive had it installed for like 2 years, with off and on stability.
i have never found a good howto on how to troubleshoot instability in windows.
i am very frustrated becasue my windows shuts down sparatically do to a device driver error.

how do i troubleshoot this?

things i have read:

reformat (hah)
disable all uneeded devices,
use verifier.exe (dont konw how to use it)
get all most up to date drivers (done)
pray

where do i start.

i would start by identifying the root cause -- seems to be some device driver, but which one?

I hope you can find your problem but I often found there was no reason to be found for instability on windows (not apparent it just goes instable without leaving traces/logs)

Identify which driver it is. If it's not clear it can help look at what you open or what is running at the same time. Also it might help searching on google with the exact error.

yeah, but XP should be way more stable than 'sporadic shutdown'....

i actually like the OS. but not with SP2 -- uuggg...

well, i don't like the home version much, either, but no offense. they just dumbed down the pro version, and i hate gimicks like that.

Don't know. I just know that it always seems to screw things up if I use it for an hour at school. I always get errors and hangups when I just shouldn't.

is this a school's system you use? i guess they've put in all kinds of security limitations, and that takes away from stability -- funny, but windows tends to do that when you hack it...

but if it's your computer plugged into their network... umm.. maybe it's their domain, or something?

anyways, i use and recommend XP pro -- it's better in many regards, but if you really want clean/stable, i still recommend 2000 -- for non-gamers...

It's a school system but it has no limitations on it. You can do anything you want with it, change its settings install new software. I even doubt there's a bios password on it. It's in a room you can only access with a teacher so I think they think we can't do much with a teacher watching.

ok so the error message i saw on reboot was, a code for different things like:
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
BAD_POOL_CALLER

and probably others. that i forgot.
when i submit the error i am directed to a page taht says is a device driver but micorsoft doesnt know which one.

i turned on verifier.exe to test all teh non-signed drivers. this brings me a blue screen after i log into windows.
error 0x0-c4, 0x-90, 0xFFDFF120, 0x0-0, 0x-0
(dashes indicate string of 0's)

google finds
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0x000000C4: DRIVER_VERIFIER_DETECTED_VIOLATION
(Click to consult the online MSDN article.)
This is the general bug check code for fatal errors that the Driver Verifier finds. The accompanying parameters are the parameters that are passed to KeBugCheckEx and displayed on a blue screen.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i am supposed to then record teh error message and boot into safe mode and turn off verifier.exe.
when i boot into safe mode it hangs at boot, right after loading Mup.sys

ive had safe mode hang before after mup.sys, but it fixed itself randomly, while i was scandisking, chkdsking, and playing with the bios.

still stumped

ok more googling found this:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0x90 Reserved Reserved Reserved The driver switched stacks, and the current stack is neither a thread stack nor a DPC stack.
(Typically, the driver doing this should be on the stack obtained by the kb debugger command.)
. . . .

Cause

See the description of each code in the Parameters section for a description of the cause.
Resolving the Problem

This bug check can only occur when Driver Verifier has been instructed to monitor one or more drivers. If you did not intend to use Driver Verifier, you should deactivate it. You might consider removing the driver which caused this problem as well.

If you are the driver writer, use the information obtained through this bug check to fix the bugs in your code.

After a Memory Allocation Tracking bug check, use the following command in the kernel debugger:

kd> dp ViBadDriver L1; dS @$p

This will return the name of the driver causing the error.

Then use the the !verifier debugger extension:

kd> !verifier 3 drivername.sys

This will return information about the leaked memory allocations.

For full details, see Driver Verifier.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


so now my question is how can i boot into windows to turn off verifier? how can run the kernel debugger?

ps my windows parttion is fat32 so i can see it in linux.

bump

bump

e-mail not available... guess i'll post in here... hope you're not bumping for my sake... wish i could help, but you've got some sort of issue, and doing a good job with the documentation, but i'm not following all that. just not up on driver troubleshooting in MS...

best of luck

Screw safe mode
If you have an actual install disk of Windows boot into the recovery console ..
after you book the cd, you can hit R, i think, to get there..

then type disable verifier.exe

and whatever else you want to disablke

I beleive you can also disable mup.sys with no problems... I had that problem on a PC I was fixing before

Stupid windows.. I feel ya.


Also, it really seems that you have two devices conflicting... probably running on the same IRQ.... is the machine running and drivers that aren't "signed" by Microsoft... Those crazy device driver conflicts are a bitch.

afro don't use any debuggers they won't help you.

What you need to do is reformat, then install drivers ONE AT A TIME to test whether or not they are the ones causing problems. Eventually you'll find the source.

It may also be bad RAM though this is less likely. Try running memtest x86