BAD_POOL_CALLER blue screen

[jbcseri]

The problem is that the system is randomly getting a blue screen with
the message:
BAD_POOL_CALLER
STOP 0x000000C2 (0x00000040,0x00000000,0x80000000,0x00000000).

The blue screen sometimes occurs during FBA, and sometimes it occurs
when I swap the USB mouse with a USB thumb drive, but it is not
consistently reproducible and I have not been able to get a memory
dump from it, which has made it difficult to diagnose. The error has
something to do with the system recognizing a piece of hardware as a
Microsoft Serial Ballpoint, but no such device is connected to the
machine. I have run Target Analyzer (tap.exe) under a fresh install of
XP Pro and also under my XPe image, which does not include the
Microsoft Serial Ballpoint driver component, and TA results indicate
that it has found a Microsoft Serial Ballpoint. After the last blue
screen (still no memory dump), I examined setupapi.log and the last
entry was "Doing full install of SERENUM\BALLPOINT\5&107BC923&0&0000",
which points to the ballpoint being the problem. In addition to
leaving out the Microsoft Serial Ballpoint component from my XPe build
(previously, I tried leaving it in only to have the same results), I
also eliminated all references to it in msmouse.inf, but that did not
change anything. My guess is that maybe there is a piece of hardware
on the system that has the same PnP ID as the ballpoint and it is
causing a problem, although I am not sure exactly how to investigate
it (aside from looking at every PnP ID in the component database).

I'm not sure what else to try. I have already searched this newsgroup
for similar issues and read the MS links about how to diagnose a blue
screen, but that requires a memory dump, which I just can't seem to
get (not sure if that's a separate issue or related). Any insight I
can get would be greatly appreciated.

 

[KM]

Hi,

First thing that comes to my mind - KD (Kernel Debugger). With a stable repro case, where you target PC crashes consistently, it
should be relatively easy to get to the source of the crash. With KD you should be able to see the driver stack calls when the issue
occurs and no need to mess with the memory dumps.

Just to mention. It is possible to get memory dump functionality working on XPe. Make sure you've got "Disk dump drivers" component
in.

So you are saying you don't see the Microsoft Serial Ballpoint device in Device Manger-->"Mice and other pointing devices" group
under XP Pro on the same target? What if you select "show hidden devices" there? Then you may be able to see "ghost" devices
(drivers for non-attached hardware).

Any chance you have a GPS hardware attached to the target? Or any other serial devices?
One thing you may want to try is to add /noserialmice switch to default ArcPath in boot.ini. (I don't recall exactly if it is
NoSerialMouse or NoSerialMice though)

 

[Sean Liming \(eMVP\)]

To add to KM's list, any USB hubs attached? I ran into this error with a USB
HUB.

Regards,

Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
XP Embedded Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental
Toolkit

 

[jbcseri]

No USB hubs attached to the device. In fact, there is only one USB
port, which is used for either a standard USB mouse or a USB thumb
drive.

I have all of the necessary components built in for a memory dump, but
the memory dump file is just not there. I've never used KD, but I'm
sure there's some documentation to help.

I'll try the boot.ini flag(s). I just did a little search on that and
found something that says that the system mistakes GPS devices for
serial mice sometimes. Now I'm going to look into it further, because
I believe there is a GPS device on my target machine.

Thanks guys. You got me thinking in the right direction.