Blue screen of death!

[Angel Massa]

I've been trying Vista for 3 days and it's great. But since yesterday I got
blue screen craches often without a visible cause. The crashes seems random
and never happens doing the same thing.

The problem started when I tryied voice recognition and during the tutorial
happened very often. Yesterday I got a blue screen without using voice
recognition, so I'm not sure if this is the cause.

After the blue screen Vista reboots automatically.

How can I report a random bug like this?

Regards,
Angel.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Create a bug report and upload the dump files that are being created.
Chances are this is driver related, and you should find the dumps under
C:\Windows\minidump if you are using small (kernel) dumps, or
C:\Windows\memory.dmp if using a standard dump. Check the event viewer also
for clues as to what's going on.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Angel Massa]

Great!

I will look for the dump files and send them on the report. Thanks agail
Rick!

Best regards,
Angel.

 

[Chad Harris]

Angel--

I understand that Vista is in Beta, but I've used a number of builds and
continued BSOD stops without cause is not the norm. I'd report it by any
means possible, although I'm not sure what Rick means when he says that the
public should "bug" it. Maybe there is a bug device for the public I don't
see, or maybe h e means click a feedback icon. I'm not sure how the public
would get notification of any action on their bug, since that's often
difficult for anyone.

Using *Win RE* for Blue Screen No Boot Vista Situations

Meanwhile, I just wanted to offer a solution for your Blue Screens, since
the feature is not widely known, and MSFT has to this moment failed to
publish anything substantive on how to use it anywhere on www.microsoft.com
including Vista sites, Vista help sites, Technet, or MSDN sites relating to
Vista.

Try Win RE (Windows Repair Environment). You will need to have a DVD burned
to use this. When Vista RTMs there will be the standard OEM "recovery
discs" and partitions and unless they are custom made for enterprises which
will exclude about 500,000,000 OEM preinstalled buyers who don't have the
spunk to demand that they get included in their purchase a free retail DVD
that they don't pay extra money for. This unfortunate circumstance exists
right now with respect to the 300 named OEM partners in XP, and will repeat
itself for 6 or so more years in Vista, until it will begin to repeat itself
in Vienna/Blackcomb for another 6 years.

Win RE can be launched directly from the installation media that MSFT says
it will mail out to people in a few weeks. If you burn the ISO, Win RE can
be launched directly from it. It fixed a registry corruption caused by the
erratic damaging SFC (SystemFile Checker) that the developers and PMS on the
Vista team have crafted for Vista. This tool is targeting fixing corrupt
drivers, registry corruption, drivers and that are not compatible with
yourhardware, and OS upgrades that are unstable and crash with BSOD stop
errors, and a few other no start problems that will be elucidated when and
if someone from MSFT ever rights an intelligent article on this feature.
In other words, they turned Vista loose on the public without explaining
many of its features, includingthe ones that are designed to save your OS.
I consider saving the OS a fairly important priority. It's hard for me to
discern what priority MSFT gives it.

***Accessing Windows RE (Repair Environment):***

1) Insert Media into PC

2) You will see on the Vista logo setup screen after lang. options in the
lower left corner, a link called "System Recovery Options."

3) Select your OS for repair.

4) Its been my experience that you can see some causes of the crash from the
Win RE feature, but as is SOP with errors from Windows, most of them are
written in unintelligible encrypted language, hex or otherwise, that are
often metastatically and ectopically scattered to the four corners of the
operating system. They also have cute names like Sometimes at least one of
them is in English.

Good luck,

CH

 

[Angel Massa]

Hi Chad,

Thanks for your explanation. Rick suggestions of reporting a bug is correct.
Everyone with Beta 2 has a bug report tool. In fact I reported some bugs
already.

I understand in your explanations that the install DVD of Vista Beta 2
contains the Win RE tool and I can use it to check for the BSOD problem.
Right?

My system doesn't seems to need any repair or restore. But I will try to
execute this tool to see if it reports some problems that cause the BSOD.
It's really weird as some times I can work for some hours without a blue
screen and then I get many in a few minutes.

It not a hardware related problem as my system runs flawlessly for days with
XP.

Best regards,
Angel.

 

[Guest]

Reporting any bugs is the most important possible thing you can do when
testing a Beta! However, fatal stop errors (BSODs) are far more often caused
by hardware than any other category of problem. This does not necessarily
mean that your hardware is faulty but the drivers for certain hardware may be
making calls that Vista rules to be illegal. In this case I would suspect
possible sound card/microphone issues. Just a hunch of course. <g>

 

[milleron]

I've been trying Vista for 3 days and it's great. But since yesterday I got
blue screen craches often without a visible cause. The crashes seems random
and never happens doing the same thing.

The problem started when I tryied voice recognition and during the tutorial
happened very often. Yesterday I got a blue screen without using voice
recognition, so I'm not sure if this is the cause.

After the blue screen Vista reboots automatically.

How can I report a random bug like this?

Regards,
Angel.

Beware a hardware problem. Crashes that follow no pattern often
bespeak defective RAM or PSU. I'm not trying to discourage you from
filing the bug report, but can you tell us about the PSU you use and
whether you've run your RAM through Memtest86 or even Vista's built-in
memory checker?

 

[Chad Harris]

Angel--

I understand that Vista is in Beta, but I've used a number of builds and
continued BSOD stops without cause is not the norm. I'd report it by any
means possible, although I'm not sure what Rick means when he says that the
public should "bug" it. Maybe there is a bug device for the public I don't
see, or maybe h e means click a feedback icon. I'm not sure how the public
would get notification of any action on their bug, since that's often
difficult for anyone.

Using *Win RE* for Blue Screen No Boot Vista Situations

Meanwhile, I just wanted to offer a solution for your Blue Screens, since
the feature is not widely known, and MSFT has to this moment failed to
publish anything substantive on how to use it anywhere on www.microsoft.com
including Vista sites, Vista help sites, Technet, or MSDN sites relating to
Vista.

Try Win RE (Windows Repair Environment). You will need to have a DVD burned
to use this. When Vista RTMs there will be the standard OEM "recovery
discs" and partitions and unless they are custom made for enterprises which
will exclude about 500,000,000 OEM preinstalled buyers who don't have the
spunk to demand that they get included in their purchase a free retail DVD
that they don't pay extra money for. This unfortunate circumstance exists
right now with respect to the 300 named OEM partners in XP, and will repeat
itself for 6 or so more years in Vista, until it will begin to repeat itself
in Vienna/Blackcomb for another 6 years.

Win RE can be launched directly from the installation media that MSFT says
it will mail out to people in a few weeks. If you burn the ISO, Win RE can
be launched directly from it. It fixed a registry corruption caused by the
erratic damaging SFC (SystemFile Checker) that the developers and PMS on the
Vista team have crafted for Vista. This tool is targeting fixing corrupt
drivers, registry corruption, drivers and that are not compatible with
yourhardware, and OS upgrades that are unstable and crash with BSOD stop
errors, and a few other no start problems that will be elucidated when and
if someone from MSFT ever rights an intelligent article on this feature.
In other words, they turned Vista loose on the public without explaining
many of its features, includingthe ones that are designed to save your OS.
I consider saving the OS a fairly important priority. It's hard for me to
discern what priority MSFT gives it.

***Accessing Windows RE (Repair Environment):***

1) Insert Media into PC

2) You will see on the Vista logo setup screen after lang. options in the
lower left corner, a link called "System Recovery Options."

3) Select your OS for repair.

4) Its been my experience that you can see some causes of the crash from the
Win RE feature, but as is SOP with errors from Windows, most of them are
written in unintelligible encrypted language, hex or otherwise, that are
often metastatically and ectopically scattered to the four corners of the
operating system. They also have cute names like Sometimes at least one of
them is in English.

Good luck,

CH

 

[Chad Harris]

Angel--

What was the BSOD you had?

Sorry to have posedt twice above--I didn't have all the messages dl'd so
didin't see the first time. By all means report anything that seems to be a
bug anyway you can (bug tool or feed back icon or sometimes MSFT puts
feedback links on the vista sites).

But however vague they are and however many things they can mean--my fav
are the BSODs that say the system has been shut down because of a bad
driver, but doesn't acknowledge that if you type "driverquery" without
quotes in the cmd line of a Windows OS, you're going to see about 150-200
kernel stack drivers and 35-50 drivers that are not; both hdw and software.

So your BSOD has numbers and some key words.

One thing I would try since you didn't ID the BSOD error, is:

Disable the *inspection* by driver verifier of the software drivers--yep
I said software drivers of whatever Antivirus program you are using.

1. Click Start, click Run, and then type verifier.
2. After Driver Verifier Manager starts, click Display Existing
Settings, and then confirm that Deadlock Detection is turned on.
3. Click Back.
4. Click Create Custom Settings, and then click Next.
5. Click Select Individual settings from a full list, and then click
Next.
6. Click the settings that you want to turn on, make sure the Deadlock
Detection check box is not selected, and then click Next.
7. Click the drivers that you want to verify, and then click Next or
Finish if you choose all drivers on your computer.
8.Restart the computer.



If you cannot log on to the computer after you restart with Driver Verifier
turned on, turn off Driver Verifier, but this occurence is rare. To do so,
start the computer in Safe mode, log on by using an account that has
administrator rights, start Driver Verifier, and then choose to delete the
existing settings. After you do so, Driver Verifier is turned off.


This alone is a much more common cause of BSOD stops of many stripes than
MSFT's engineers have come to recognized yet. A frequent comment you'll
hear from MSFT engineers is that 80% of BSOD stops are driver induced.
That's a real oversimplification. But I would review if you installed any
recent drivers on your XP box lately and make sure you're satisfied with
them.

One of the very few pieces of documentation the 1-2000 people on different
Vista teams have issued is this white paper on Driver Verifier in Vista:

Driver Verifier in Windows Vista
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/DevTools/tools/vistaverifier.mspx

Information on SFC (System File Checker), SR,(System Restore) and Win RE in
Vista is yet to be made available. Since the first two are currently broken
up throught 5384.4 (Beta2) that seems to be reason enough for MSFT to get
some information out in a fomrat in addition to the books going into
bookstores in the next two weeks.

CH

 

[Angel Massa]

Hi Chad,

Yesterday I wanted to fill a bug report for this issue but I had no time.
Today I will do it for sure!

I can see the information on the blue screen as it only displays for a
couple of second and then the system reboots automatically. I thing that it
should wait for a keyboard click to reboot so the user can read it. I will
also take a look at the events logs to see if I get some information about
the problem.

I've also noticed that after the reboot I get a message saying that the
system had a problem and asking if I want to solve it. I don't know it it
sends some kind of information to Microsoft automatically.

I will also try the driver verifier procedure following your instructions. I
agree that must be some kind of driver problem and I suspect about the sound
system driver. On XP my system is totally stable using the same drivers and
they seem to work fine in Vista. I get the control panels working and sound
works fine except a low signal for the mic input that dones't allow to use
voice recognition (already reported).

Best regards,
Angel.

 

[Guest]

I installed the beta a couple of days ago and witnessed the first bsod today
during bootup. I almost missed it, so quickly did Vista reboot. I located the
dump file but haven't been able to find any clues in the log files at all.
Any thoughts on where I can find the stop information in the logfiles (or the
dump file?)

Erik Bell

 

[Chad Harris]

Angel--

You should be able to do this setting to pause the bsod and keep it from
rebooting automatically so you can see it and you are free to read it/copy
it. I'm not on a Vista box right now, but it should be similar to XP as to
the pausing. Try hitting the Windows + Pause Break keys at the same
time>Advanced Tab>System Startup Button Settings button on the bottom of
that box>check in automatic restart.

What you are probably seeing is a feature that the errors related teams in
vista are developing in the category of auto-diagnosis and auto-correction
of errors that attemp to fix errors as well send info on them to MSFT.

The driver problem I referred to Angela is with respect to the *inspection*
of the drivers by the driver verifier tool in Windows, not the drivers
themselves.

One of the rididulous pieces of information MSFT continues to provide to
customers that understandably leaves them bewildered are the variet of BSODs
that tell them that their system has been shutdown due to a faulty kernel
stack driver. Since you can type "driverquery" at the XP or Vista cmd
prompt (don't use the quotes I used to set it apart for you to see it>type
cmd into the run box and you will see this prompt, and get a list of about
170-200 kernel stack drivers and 25-50 non-kernel stack drivers, it is
impossible to empirically start testing them one by one and remember you
have software drivers as well as hardware drivers although the vast majority
of Windows users would miss that as a true/false quiz question. I doubt
your sound driver has anything to do with the BSOD, and I'd focus on the
sound settings to correct the mic/voice recognition bug/problem.

CH

 

[Guest]

CH,

Thanks for your detailed info. I tried running win re but there is no such
option in windows vista installation media logon screen. But I could stop
automatic rebooting of system after memory dump which allowed me to tell you
the report of memory dump. Here it is

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

SPSYS.SYS
HASPNT.SYS

Can you help me with this problem too? Thanks in advance.

Sushil

 

[Guest]

thanks for all the help. Here is my memory dump issue

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

SPSYS.SYS
HASPNT.SYS

Please help.

Sushil

 

[Chad Harris]

Win RE's components should be an option from any Vista DVD as I described.

CH