Windows XP PFN_LIST_CORRUPT etc etc etc drat

[Abarbarian]

So I got Laura Croft installed with all the Glidos extras and the new textures and it ran really great , fab graphics and I nearly fell out of me chair with the spooky sound effects . Great fun and I'm going to pay the $10 to get rid of the spinning logo cos I think that they have done a really good job .

So methinks I'll update me graphics card drivers and install the ATI Catalyst 7.3 suite . Downloaded and when I came to install it asked me for micosoft Net 2 . I've seen that on the Autopatcher I installed on me sisters pc along with some other neat stuff , so I installed and ran all the updates to Feb 2007 . Then installed Catalyst .
Crashed pc 2 or 3 times . Figured it might be Catalyst or ATIdriver so uninstalled ran CC cleaner . Now I've no VGA Controller and me desktop looks really wierd . Try rolling back driver for Vga controller and their insn't one . Hmm . So I downloaded an older driver from the ATI site 6-12_xp_dd_38463 thats a Dec 2006 release and ran the .exe so I think I've installed it but when I look on Everset the Radeon drivers are "Installed Drivers ati2dvag (6.14.10.6652)" So I ain't got a clue whats going on .
Anyways the pc kept crashing , heres 3 of the messages ,

PFN_LIST_CORRUPT

BAD_POOL_CALLER

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

as there is no consistency to the messages I ain't got a clue whats happening .

I installed Windows Defender when I used the autopatcher , now I have a dim memory that this caused me some problems before . So I uninstalled Defender along with several other programs . Now the pc has been running without crashing for one hour . All I wanted to do was get the best performance out of me graphics card and all I've had is brain meltdown for 7 or 8 hours and I'm still no wiser and I still have no idea whats going on .

 

[Abarbarian]

Well the pc ran for 2 hours while I played TR . Then it crashed whilst running Malicious Software Removal Tool . Heres the message,

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

and I've had 2 more crashes with no message just the long string of 0X000000 numbers , I haven't bothered to write all of them down as I've spent days following the microsoft madness trail that ends up saying nothing helpful .

I'm almost at the point of deciding to finish playing TR and then selling me pc and buying an PlayStation that way at least I'll be able to play some games without tearingh me hair out .

 

[Ian]

That definitely sounds like a graphics card driver problem, did it work fine on your old drivers before?

It may be worth uninstalling the ATI drivers completely using this tool, then trying an older driver again:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1275
or http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=1447

It should remove all traces of the Catalyst driver and let you start again

 

[Abarbarian]

Yep pc was running as sweet as nut untill I tried to update me drivers and try out the Catalyst Suite . Tried 2 lots of drivers and 2 versions of Catalyst Suite both from the official site , followed their directions for uninstalling etc etc .
I found the Guru site but it had tooooooooo much info and was going to investigate it later . Anyways I'll give their uninstaller a go and try replacing with this set from them , it sounds like the right one for my card ,

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1542

Didn't excpect much improvement on my cards performance but wanted to have it performing at its best and was going to have a go at tweaking and overclocking . Think I'll give all that a rest untill I've finished building the pc thats half finished . At least that way I won't be screwing up me main pc .

Thanks again .

 

[Abarbarian]

Well I've run the un-install tool and installed the new drivers and things seem ok at present . Thanks for the advice

 

[Ian]

Excellent I'm pleased it's back up and running

 

[Abarbarian]

Your not the only one

 

[Abarbarian]

False alarm . System still crashing several ,

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

and several blue screens with lots of numbers . Fire Fox been playing up and Boinc not working properly after re-install . So it looks like a fresh install of XP , drat .

 

[Abarbarian]

Well I didn't give up and do a fresh install , too much work for me at the moment .

Thanks Ian , I used the un-installer from Guru and tried out these ,

NGO ATI Optimized Driver v1.7.2

NGO ATI Optimized Driver v1.6.12

both of then kept crashing the pc so i tried ,

Radeon Omega Drivers 3.8.330 (Cat 7.1)

and so far me pc seems stable , ran for 4 hours without crashing . So it looks like I might have solved me problem .

Haven't got a clue why the type is so big , oh well its easier to read [mucks fixed it for you]

 

[Abarbarian]

Further update pc was still crashing but only twice which was a big improvement . I don't know why but I thought I'd take a look for any left over files . To my suprise I found files left over from the four faulty installs . This is after following ATI instructions and using the Guru un-installer and running CC cleaner several times . So I've deleted files from the Prefetch folder and from the Windows folder . Now all I have to do is see if that makes a difference .
So if you do uninstall ati stuff its well worth using Windows Search to find any left over files .