Thread: BSOD!
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Old March 14th 19, 03:52 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Mr Pounder Esquire
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Default BSOD!

Paul wrote:
Mr Pounder Esquire wrote:
Turned on my elderly XP computer this morning and got it for the
very first time. I panicked - Ctrl Alt Delete and everything was
fine. Three turns off/on and everything is fine. Not much
information I know. Seems that Windows would not start to protect my
system. I'm hoping this is just a glitch?



BSODs have a stop code.

http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm

Event Viewer might have a record of the event.

If Automatic Restart is disabled, the BSOD will
stay put on the screen, so you can write down the
STOP number.

As an example, say you get a stop code of 0x7E.
You'd look that up, and maybe it says "Inaccessible Boot Volume".
What that means is, initially the BIOS uses a BIOS
disk read routine. This continues for a few seconds, after
which the OS starts using its disk driver to read the
disk, and the BIOS routine is no longer used from
that point. If the "handoff" fails and the disk cannot
be read (because it's the "wrong" driver), then the OS
crashes on the spot. You can do this, by entering the BIOS
and changing the port from IDE to AHCI mode (this can happen
if the CMOS battery is flat and "defaults" have taken the
place of the battery-protected value). The WinXP doesn't
have a driver for AHCI, and it will crash when the IDE driver
tries to read the AHCI port.

When the same crash happens consistently (0x7E 0x7E 0x7E...),
and a driver is involved, then it's probably a driver issue.

If, on the other hand, it's error 22 now, error 47 next time,
error 3 the next time, sometimes that's a sign that the RAM
is bad, and you should use a RAM test program. A constantly
varying error number, with really obscure root causes, means
it's the RAM doing it, and not the obscure reason it claims
to be.

There are a couple STOP codes that are based on
internal CPU failures. Some paths inside the
CPU are covered by ECC, and consistent errors on
certain operations throw a STOP code which indicates
the CPU is bad. I think there was one of those in the
newsgroups. That doesn't happen very often. There was
a more consistent case like that, caused when Intel
shipped a bad batch of processors. Because of some of
the little "factory fraud" techniques used by some
of the packaging employees, you would suspect they
put some CPUs from the "Bad" pile into boxes, to hide
the "Good" processes they took out of the building in
a pants pocket. On another occasion, an inanimate object
(a block of wood, some foam?), was substituted in place
of a processor. At least you won't be doing a build
with that, if you get a package of that sort.

*******

Windows XP has a couple of services, security services,
that if they stop running, the OS shuts down 60 seconds
later.

It turns out Windows 10 has a similar protection mechanism.
However, it's an immediate crash. I was reading this only
a day or two ago, that certain "exploits", if Microsoft
detects some particular thing being hooked, the code in
the kernel just cashes the machine. So no 60 second timer
on the screen, just "crash-ola". I've not seen any
pictures of what this looks like. I guess some things
will never change.

Paul


Thanks for your time, effort and expert advice.
I've done about six cold starts since the problem and all seems fine. Also
did the disk check.


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