BSOD - Rule of thumb?

[BigAl.NZ]

Hi Guys,

I was speaking to someone the other day who said as a rule of thumb,
BSOD errors are generally related to either :
(a) Memory
(b) Bad sectors on critical parts of the HDD.

Anyone care to add there opinion to this?

Cheers

-Al

 

[Brendan]

I was speaking to someone the other day who said as a rule of thumb,
BSOD errors are generally related to either :
(a) Memory
(b) Bad sectors on critical parts of the HDD.

Anyone care to add there opinion to this?

Also driver problems.

--

.... Brendan

#15641 +(3774)- [X]

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mouthful of beer.
<GrandCow> HAHAHAHA that was me bitch!
<superwoman> DANNY?!?!?!
<GrandCow> MOM?!?!?!?!


Note: All my comments are copyright 28/01/2007 11:12:01 p.m. and are opinion only where not otherwise stated and always "to the best of my recollection". www.computerman.orcon.net.nz.

 

[Dianthus Mimulus]

Hi Guys,

I was speaking to someone the other day who said as a rule of thumb,
BSOD errors are generally related to either :
(a) Memory
(b) Bad sectors on critical parts of the HDD.

Anyone care to add there opinion to this?

Why the cross-posting?

I would have said BSODs indicate poor memory management by the OS, becuase
they indicate where a process attempts to access memory that properly
belongs to another process.

The fact that BSODs aren't so common anymore indicates that the memory
management has improved.

I would have expected some other error message for a disc read/write/access
error.

 

[Jon]

Wasn't it <[email protected]> in message
, who said
something like......???

Hi Guys,

I was speaking to someone the other day who said as a rule of thumb,
BSOD errors are generally related to either :
(a) Memory
(b) Bad sectors on critical parts of the HDD.

Anyone care to add there opinion to this?

Cheers

-Al

A rule of thumb is that if you speak to hardware specialist they'll give you
a hardware explanation for the errors, and a software specialist will give
you a software explanation.

 

[Walter Mautner]

Hi Guys,

I was speaking to someone the other day who said as a rule of thumb,
BSOD errors are generally related to either :
(a) Memory

May be.

(b) Bad sectors on critical parts of the HDD.

As well.
Happened to a co-worker a week ago. I could ghost the drive with the
ignore-bad-sector switch, to another one, then make a xp repair install yet
still it came up only in safe mode, with a BSOD otherwise.
Had to dig the drivers directory and move out any non-microsofties first (it
helps to change the detailed-view properties for that task), then reinstall
all the graphics, directcd and other stuff from media, and reapply the xp
updates/fixes.

Still don't know which one of the drivers got stuffed and wasn't recognized
by the repair install.

Anyone care to add there opinion to this?

There are a quadzillion reasons for them, like
- bad software, in particular drivers
- malfunctioning cpu or mainboard, due to
-- many reasons, including PSU failures
-- memory mismatches
-- overclocked chipsets
-- overheated cpu or chipsets

 

[Robert Moir]

Why the cross-posting?

I would have said BSODs indicate poor memory management by the OS,
becuase they indicate where a process attempts to access memory that
properly belongs to another process.

You'd be mistaken. BSODs suggest a number of fatal error conditions, and
memory "management" is only one class of error here.

 

[Robert Moir]

Hi Guys,

I was speaking to someone the other day who said as a rule of thumb,
BSOD errors are generally related to either :
(a) Memory
(b) Bad sectors on critical parts of the HDD.

Anyone care to add there opinion to this?

Just about any serious hardware fault. Drivers are, as someone said already,
a pretty common cause.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Hi Guys,

I was speaking to someone the other day who said as a rule of thumb,
BSOD errors are generally related to either :
(a) Memory
(b) Bad sectors on critical parts of the HDD.

Anyone care to add there opinion to this?

Cheers

-Al

Of all the BSods I've seen over the years, some were caused by
defective memory, none by bad sectors on the hard drive (although I'll
concede the possibility, just haven't encountered it), and most by
corrupted/damaged/incompatibile device drivers.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell

 

[Dianthus Mimulus]

You'd be mistaken. BSODs suggest a number of fatal error conditions, and
memory "management" is only one class of error here.

Would you care to elaborate further on this?

What are all the fatal error conditions that you are referring to?

 

[WhzzKdd]

Would you care to elaborate further on this?

What are all the fatal error conditions that you are referring to?

ALL? Hah! You don't want to know ALL the BSOD errors. Here's a short list of
common BSOD stop errors:

http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Windows_XP_Blue_Screen_of_Death_STOP_Codes-t43519.html

You want more?

http://safari.oreilly.com/0596004168/winxpannoy-APP-E

You want ALL? Buy a book.

 

[Kerry Brown]

ALL? Hah! You don't want to know ALL the BSOD errors. Here's a short list
of common BSOD stop errors:

http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Windows_XP_Blue_Screen_of_Death_STOP_Codes-t43519.html

You want more?

http://safari.oreilly.com/0596004168/winxpannoy-APP-E

You want ALL? Buy a book.

There's a pretty extensive list here:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms789516.aspx

 

[WhzzKdd]

There's a pretty extensive list here:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms789516.aspx

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about <g>! Certainly shows that the OP's
friend's supposition that BSOD errors are

<quote>
generally related to either :
(a) Memory
(b) Bad sectors on critical parts of the HDD.
</quote>

should be dismissed as totally wrong.

 

[Enkidu]

Would you care to elaborate further on this?

What are all the fatal error conditions that you are referring to?

A BSOD is analogous to a 'kernel panic'. Any kernel level condition that
cannot be handled can lead to a 'kernel panic' or 'BSOD'. In both the
Unix model and the Windows model you cannot have a part of the address
space that belongs to more than one process, unless that part of the
address space is specifically defined to be in shared space. Very often
the cause of a serious kernel level is trying to access a part of the
address space that has not been defined, probably because of a corrupted
or non-initialised pointer. An error in an error handler such that the
error could not be handled by a lower level handler would cause a
'kernel panic' or 'BSOD'.

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[Enkidu]

Of all the BSods I've seen over the years, some were caused by
defective memory, none by bad sectors on the hard drive (although I'll
concede the possibility, just haven't encountered it), and most by
corrupted/damaged/incompatibile device drivers.

Could be bad sectors causing corrupted drivers. Consider, a sector goes
bad, gets read (badly) as part of a driver loading. The driver is now
'corrupt' and fails on every load. Reinstalling the driver makes it use
different sectors, and the problem goes away.

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Could be bad sectors causing corrupted drivers. Consider, a sector goes
bad, gets read (badly) as part of a driver loading. The driver is now
'corrupt' and fails on every load. Reinstalling the driver makes it use
different sectors, and the problem goes away.

I concede the possibility, certainly. Although, so far, diagnostics
run on the hard drives of machines with driver failures haven't reported
any such problems. I'm not saying bad sectors can't cause a BSOD, just
that it hasn't yet happened to me.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell

 

[Robert Moir]

<quote>
generally related to either :
(a) Memory
(b) Bad sectors on critical parts of the HDD.
</quote>

should be dismissed as totally wrong.

Hmmm. In terms of percentage of options on the list of things that can cause
an error you are, of course, totally correct.

In terms of percentage of things that actually occur day to day, I'm willing
to bet memory and disk errors take a good fair share of scalps, but of
course they don't tell the whole story by any means.

 

[Robert Moir]

Could be bad sectors causing corrupted drivers. Consider, a sector
goes bad, gets read (badly) as part of a driver loading. The driver
is now 'corrupt' and fails on every load. Reinstalling the driver
makes it use different sectors, and the problem goes away.

Certainly a good candidate but my experience of "bad drivers" has been "bad
in the sense that the programmer was apparently wearing boxing gloves and
drunk off his head while coding" more than anything else.

 

[WhzzKdd]

Hmmm. In terms of percentage of options on the list of things that
can cause an error you are, of course, totally correct.

In terms of percentage of things that actually occur day to day, I'm
willing to bet memory and disk errors take a good fair share of
scalps, but of course they don't tell the whole story by any means.

Well, in my experience, memory issues (faulty memory, memory management
errors withing Windows) has been way down the list. Most frequently BSODs
have been issues with drivers, second most frequent are because of hard
drive errors that have occurred.

As always, YMMV. I would guess a lot of that might depend on what hardware
is most often on someone's workbench.

 

[WhzzKdd]

Could be bad sectors causing corrupted drivers. Consider, a sector
goes bad, gets read (badly) as part of a driver loading. The driver
is now 'corrupt' and fails on every load. Reinstalling the driver
makes it use different sectors, and the problem goes away.

Cheers,

Cliff

Not at all infrequent. Not only drivers, but other primary components of the
OS can be corrupted by failing sectors. I've had systems on my bench for
that exact problem several times in the last year.

 

[Dianthus Mimulus]

A BSOD is analogous to a 'kernel panic'. Any kernel level condition that
cannot be handled can lead to a 'kernel panic' or 'BSOD'. In both the
Unix model and the Windows model you cannot have a part of the address
space that belongs to more than one process, unless that part of the
address space is specifically defined to be in shared space. Very often
the cause of a serious kernel level is trying to access a part of the
address space that has not been defined, probably because of a corrupted
or non-initialised pointer. An error in an error handler such that the
error could not be handled by a lower level handler would cause a
'kernel panic' or 'BSOD'.

Yeah - that is very much like what I thought. Thanks for the more detailed
explanation.