USB thumb drives and BSOD

[Rob Bonzer]

I'm using SP1, a custom shell, with disk based EWF. We have reports that
occasionally, when inserting or removing a USB thumb drive, we get a BSOD
with PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA in ewf.sys.

After searching around for answers, all I can find is that Microsoft says
that its an issue with the device driver for the device. This information is
for normal XP. Is the reason the blue screen says its ewf.sys, because all
reads/writes go through ewf?

I've actually seen this seen this happen with XP Pro and XP Home, but it
only annoyed me at the time because it wasn't my device that it was
happening on. Now its my problem. Has anyone had to deal with this?

Also, can anyone point me to where info is on how to "safely remove" the
thumb drive?

Thanks
Rob

 

[Dave August]

Rob,

I'm sure no 'expert' here but...

If you aren't using 'eject device' from file manager (or doing the
equivelent in SW) and the device has dirty buffers it's going to try and
flush . Uh yep I bet yer gonna get a BSOD about half the time..

AFAIK if you do the 'eject' dance all will be OK... but a 'surprise removal
on USB thumbs is a no no.... FWIW I've had CF cards get whacked beyond
repair by doing a 'surprise removal'...

Dave