TrevMUN

Alright. Should I image the disc before or after I perform chkdsk? I sw some people saying chkdsk resulted in the loss of several files, folders going empty, etc. That's why I opted to copy my personal and necessary files to a USB drive now.

Still haven't run the driver verifier yet, been too busy with a move and several end-of-semester things going on at once. However, the day after moving my rig to the new place, I woke up to Acronis Drive Monitor alerting me that a high-risk critical event had occurred at 5:00 AM my time: "The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume Primary Drive." Error code 55. Primary Drive is my C: drive, of course. It's the first time I've ever seen this happen, at least for as long as I've been using Acronis Drive Monitor. If it happened on the older drives I've had before then, I'd never known about it. Anyway, I looked this up at Microsoft's technet, then ran chckntfs. The drive is indeed "dirty;" my secondary drive isn't. I'm in the middle of making a new copy/backup of my files to a USB drive as I write this. I haven't yet run chkdsk /x (or more likely, have it schedule a chkdsk run when I restart) because I wanted to confer with you guys on some things: Is chkdsk the best tool for the job in this case? Would it be better for me to get Spinrite and run that?Do you guys think just copying my personal and/or necessary files to a USB drive is adequate in this case? Should I be using some kind of hard drive imaging software like Acronis TrueImage or something, if the corrupt file system has led to certain files "disappearing?"I may just buy a new hard drive, create a fresh install of XP64, and start over given the problems I've had with that BSoD issue. Is that wise at this point? Is this error a sign that the drive may be going bad?If I do start fresh on a new hard drive, would the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard copy over things like drivers/etc.? If the BSoDs have been caused by a bad driver, I don't want to migrate them to a fresh copy and keep having the same problems ...

Looking into this now. Should I just run it with standard options, or ... ? Well, I hadn't actually updated my graphics card drivers until the rash of BSoDs started happening. However, I will be interested to find out if there's some kind of driver corruption going on. If there is, though, you'd think that uinstalling the driver entirely combined with nVidia's Clean Install option would have taken care of it ... All I know is, I'm regretting having ever installed Renegade-X's open beta, however fun I found the game and however much I love Command and Conquer. (There has been at least one verified issue: Renegade-X's Open Beta 1 would delete the entire Start Menu folder for the current user when uninstalled, so it leaves open the possibility that Renegade-X's devs left something in game that's caused this issue.) My rig's parts aren't as old as that. The oldest parts on the rig at present are actually the RAM and CPU, both from 2008. The motherboard is from 2009, the video card is from 2011, and the hard drives are from 2012. I am looking forward to overhauling this machine with something based around Haswell-E or Skylake once they hit the marketplace ... Most likely Skylake, since by that time DDR4 prices are expected to start coming down from premium and it gives me more time to build up the funds for the overhaul. (My machine will still be using XP64 though!)

Argh, it happened again not even five hours later! This time I got an entirely different BSoD error message, though. Here's what WhoCrashed says: On Fri 5/9/2014 12:09:18 PM GMT your computer crashed crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini050914-02.dmp This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x2E890) Bugcheck code: 0xC5 (0xFFFFFADD991B37A8, 0x2, 0x1, 0xFFFFF800011A9B28) Error: DRIVER_CORRUPTED_EXPOOL file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System company: Microsoft Corporation description: NT Kernel & System Bug check description: This indicates that the system attempted to access invalid memory at a process IRQL that was too high. This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. This might be a case of memory corruption. More often memory corruption happens because of software errors in buggy drivers, not because of faulty RAM modules. The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time. As far as what I was doing: I had launched Steam again to let it finish updating itself/my games library. I opened a few games just to poke at them (such as the Minimum open beta, to see if I could run it--and I can). Ace Combat Assault Horizon for the PC was the other game I opened briefly. Unlike Minimum, ACAH's screen would flicker black occasionally. I shut the game down after a minute of poking at its options. The crash happened all of a sudden an hour or two later when I had Opera, Firefox, Winamp, and OpenOffice open. The sound from Winamp hung in a looping state. Here's the .dmp file for this crash. Mini050914-02.zip Here you go. CPU-Z Information.zip EDIT: Should I also post the dmp files from all the previous crashes since March?

I've never heard of this program until you mentioned it, and due to finals week I didn't have time to figure out what you meant by SPD data. I was going to try and set aside time to do that once finals ended, but wouldn't you know, I got yet another BSoD just earlier. This is what WhoCrashed has to say about it: On Fri 5/9/2014 7:57:57 AM GMT your computer crashed crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini050914-01.dmp This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x2E890) Bugcheck code: 0xA (0x1C, 0x2, 0x1, 0xFFFFF800010F141F) Error: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System company: Microsoft Corporation description: NT Kernel & System Bug check description: This indicates that Microsoft Windows or a kernel-mode driver accessed paged memory at DISPATCH_LEVEL or above. This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time. Different error message than the previous crash. I didn't notice any particular file mentioned in the BSoD message this time. Between now and the previous crash I had been doing a lot of work in 3D Studio Max and Adobe Illustrator working on projects for my classes at uni. However, when the crash happened I didn't have them open. I had Opera, Firefox, and Pale Moon open: Firefox had an active tab with a video on it. Steam was also running, as I was letting it update itself/my library of games, but I had no actual game programs going. Also, since you mentioned requiring it last time, MagicAndre, I've included the .dmp file for this crash if anyone wants to look at it. Mini050914-01.zip EDIT: Okay, I just downloaded, installed, and ran CPU-Z to find out what MagicAndre meant by the SPD and RAM timings. I'm not entirely sure what it is that needs to match. All four RAM sticks report a timings table of 333 MHz (JEDEC #2), 400 MHz (JEDEC #3), 400 MHz (EPP #1), and 333 MHz (EPP #2). All four sticks have a max bandwidth of PC2-6400 (400 MHz) and are using EPP 1.0. There is no difference in any of them that CPU-Z reports.

Another article in the FUD campaign! http://www.extremetech.com/computing/181733-microsoft-patches-ie-bug-in-windows-xp-but-its-a-huge-mistake Don't you love all these political cartoon-esque images of XP sprinkled with graves and zombies?

The butthurt goes ever on and on! Of course, Microsoft's shills in tech journalism were already hopping mad about Microsoft extending support for XP back in bygone years. Wow, that is a whole new level of zeal I haven't seen in Microsoft's FUD campaign before. That tops the whole "treating XP users like drug addicts" intervention campaign Microsoft attempted. I wonder what kind of kool-aid they gave that guy.

Well, well, well ... And here Microsoft was trying to use this as part of their FUD campaign.

They and the throng of shills buying into the FUD campaign, yeah. "Don't say we didn't warn you! This is why you should have listened to us when we said buy the latest Windows version!!!" ... never mind that there are many other browser alternatives or that all versions of IE are presently vulnerable to the exploit ...

.dmp file attached to this post as a .zip. I checked Event Viewer to see if that's ever come up, but it doesn't look like I've been hit by that problem. I'll keep this in mind if it ever does show up though. Mini042614-01.zip

Cute. Real cute, Microsoft.

Well, it was almost 19 days before I had another BSoD. Almost fooled me into thinking the clean reinstall of the nVidia drivers fixed the problem. However, it just happened again, another PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. Here's what WhoCrashed has to say about it: On Sun 4/27/2014 3:12:54 AM GMT your computer crashed crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini042614-01.dmp This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x2E890) Bugcheck code: 0x50 (0xFFFFFA880C4857C0, 0x0, 0xFFFFF97FFF0416BC, 0x5) Error: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System company: Microsoft Corporation description: NT Kernel & System Bug check description: This indicates that invalid system memory has been referenced. This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time. The actual BSoD screen didn't mention ntoskrnl.exe, however, but win32k.sys. As far as the circumstances of the crash, I can tell you that I had both Opera and Firefox running, as well as City of Heroes (I'd been using the demorecord system for a school project). Both browsers had at 15+ tabs open each. Firefox was in the foreground on a YouTube page, as I was listening to videos from a playlist while mucking around in CoH. I had tabbed to and from CoH multiple times, going between Firefox and CoH checking on certain commands I'd need to for the demorecord system. The BSoD happened as I was tabbed out of CoH and looking at Firefox the currently playing video on the playlist: there was a second or two of looped audio and screen freeze, followed by the BSoD screen. Several of the other BSoDs since March involved having both Firefox and Opera open, and YouTube as well as a game being involved as well. There does seem to be some kind of pattern there. Where should I go from here, you guys think?

I was asking about this on the XP64 forums, and it was said that chipset drivers aren't necessary to run the OS on that sort of equipment. You'd just be missing out on optimization. I'm less concerned about squeezing every last drop of performance out of my current hardware than I am upgrading to new standards. I'm willing to forgo drivers so long as the OS still runs on the hardware just fine.

I poked around and nv4_mini.sys in the drivers folder. The curious thing is, its Date Modified information says Sunday, March 09, 2014, 3:35:55 PM, right in the thick of all those BSoDs I was getting last month. However, I had updated the drivers on March 14th, not the 9th ... and given its modified date, it doesn't look like it was recently put there by the uninstall/reinstall. This was already done, as mentioned in my opening post, but not to that thorough of an extent. Five passes turned up no errors.

Alright. I'll give it a look-see as the next step. XP64 finally decided it was done with downloading the last official updates, so I took the restart after installing them as an opportunity to get the nVidia drivers sorted out. I manually uninstalled them from Add/Remove Programs and restarted. ... Only, XP64 automatically reinstalled drivers for them once I had restarted: Version 310.90. It must have done that because the installer for that version is still in an Installation Files folder I keep on C drive, but I had downloaded 335.28's installer in preparation for this and had it in my Downloads folder of My Documents ... Well, I decided to let nVidia Experience re-download the latest drivers and had it perform a Clean Install. I'll see if that changes anything. If it doesn't, I'll need to figure out how to keep XP64 from automatically installing the older drivers when trying this again. Move 335.28 into the Installation Files directory and temporarily move the older installer elsewhere?

Which they've already been doing to my knowledge ... The British and Dutch governments have paid Microsoft a hefty sum of money for custom support for government XP machines, and they're offering similarly pricey services on a client basis.

Well, yes ... I did make note of that in my opening post, but it's good to have solid confirmation, I suppose ...

XP's not dead just because Microsoft says it is. Like I said, what they're doing is more akin to trying to bury it alive. ... Someone ... someone go get a shovel, we've gotta dig XP out of there.

Checking the recent tech news, I just came across this beauty: http://blog.gsmarena.com/sk-hynix-develops-128gb-ddr4-ram-module/ The world's first 128GB DDR4 RAM module, and it will be available come next year. As I understand it, this is precisely the upper limit of RAM you can use in XP64 (and a whole lot of other versions of Windows). However, I did notice that there are threads around MSFN where people have managed to break the limits on various OSes. I've also noticed that it seems like XP64's codebase kin can allow for up to 1 TB of memory. So, I'm wondering: With XP64, is it doable? How much extra RAM can you get it to use, as much as Windows Server 2003? Not that I forsee myself needing that much RAM for the next few years (or possibly the rest of the decade), but hey.

The day I give up Windows XP64 (and Windows XP32 on my laptop) is the day when they can no longer serve their purposes. When I can no longer use XP64 for my computer graphics and animation projects, that's when I'll consider giving it up. XP32, well, I already use it for the odd bit of 32-bit and 16-bit legacy computing, I don't think that's going to change any time soon. Microsoft's FUD campaign has been a huge turn-off for me. You can tell they are desperate for people to shell out hundreds of bucks for a new OS, since their attempt at forced obsolescence of Windows XP hasn't turned out too well for them. They seem to be doubling down on that, though, if their hesitance to announce whether they will give Windows 7 DX12 support indicates anything.

I was wondering about that, actually: If I do an sfc /scannow and it results in a number of files getting copied over from the install CD, how does that affect any that have been patched by Windows Update? Or, I guess I should say, how do Windows Updates and hotfixes mesh with using sfc /scannow?

Hm. Interesting ... So, the driver update might account for the SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION BSoDs, since I started getting those when I updated the drivers after the CRITICAL_STRUCTURE_CORRUPTION BSoD? Would it likely be responsible for the PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA BSoDs as well? I can't help but wonder if installing Renegade X may have screwed with the drivers in some way, causing this whole mess in the first place. After all, I'd been using 310.90 since January of last year, when I had to make a fresh install of XP64 due to a dying hard drive. I hadn't encountered issues until I installed and started playing Renegade X's OB1 last month. Question: Would telling nVidia's driver installer to do a clean install be functionally equivalent to a complete uninstall and reinstall, or is this something I have to do manually? If so, how would I go about doing that?

You were getting a lot of the same BSoDs and error codes? I'm currently using nVidia GeForce 335.28, which I updated to from 310.90 (I believe) in the middle of this rash of BSoDs. After the CRITICAL_STRUCTURE_CORRUPTION incident, in fact. Would doing a clean install of 335.28 address the problem, you think?

Hey guys, XP64 has usually been a very stable and gentle operating system, with the lowest track record of BSoDs in an OS I've ever had. My computer woes tend to be hardware rather than software related; I only had two BSoDs last year, in fact, and both were explicitly caused by XP64 running out of free pages (NO_PAGES_AVAILABLE). A major sign I need to overhaul the RAM given how much multitasking I do. Starting on the 4th of March this year, though, something changed. I've had seven BSoDs since then and now, with the seventh one happening just recently, at the top of the hour (going by my post's timecode). Here's what WhoCrashed has to say about them, starting from the earliest to the most recent: On Tue 3/4/2014 5:13:15 PM GMT your computer crashed crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini030414-01.dmp This was probably caused by the following module: win32k.sys (win32k+0xA009B) Bugcheck code: 0xA (0x6DF9276A1F8, 0x2, 0x1, 0xFFFFF80001036765) Error: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\win32k.sys product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System company: Microsoft Corporation description: Multi-User Win32 Driver Bug check description: This indicates that Microsoft Windows or a kernel-mode driver accessed paged memory at DISPATCH_LEVEL or above. This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time. Google query: win32k.sys Microsoft Corporation IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL This was actually two BSoDs, but WhoCrashed only recorded one, because I hadn't had Windows XP64 to not insta-restart. The computer restarted, tried to boot to Windows, BSoD'd and restarted again. Forgot to reset that option after my previous main drive died. The issue resolved itself, weirdly enough, when I did. On Fri 3/14/2014 1:22:03 AM GMT your computer crashed crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini031314-01.dmp This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x2E890) Bugcheck code: 0xA (0xFFFFFAE053001F9A, 0x2, 0x0, 0xFFFFF800010359A2) Error: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System company: Microsoft Corporation description: NT Kernel & System Bug check description: This indicates that Microsoft Windows or a kernel-mode driver accessed paged memory at DISPATCH_LEVEL or above. This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time. This one happened after trying to download the month's round of Windows Updates. On Fri 3/14/2014 1:34:13 AM GMT your computer crashed crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini031314-02.dmp This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x2E890) Bugcheck code: 0x109 (0xA3A03A38293AC51D, 0x0, 0x1ED647BB8F24A122, 0x101) Error: CRITICAL_STRUCTURE_CORRUPTION file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System company: Microsoft Corporation description: NT Kernel & System Bug check description: This indicates that the kernel has detected critical kernel code or data corruption. This might be a case of memory corruption. More often memory corruption happens because of software errors in buggy drivers, not because of faulty RAM modules. The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time. This CRITICAL_STRUCTURE_CORRUPTION happened after the previous crash, at which I restarted using Last Known Good Configuration. Several things went wrong right away after booting to Windows: Browsers wouldn't stay open, crashing or closing themselves immediately. Opera kept reporting an error in opera.dll. The Windows Update didn't install, as XP replaced the "Shut Down" with "Shut Down and Install Updates" at the shut down menu. Trying to allow XP64 to do this got me the BSoD, though the actual message wasn't an error code, but "Modification of system code or a critical data structure was detected." I have NEVER seen that one before, not in all my years of using Windows machines. This hasn't happened again after I ran memtest86+, and (later on) dusted my computer out. On Mon 3/17/2014 4:48:40 AM GMT your computer crashed crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini031614-01.dmp This was probably caused by the following module: nv4_disp.sys (nv4_disp+0xB9C0E) Bugcheck code: 0x3B (0xC0000005, 0xFFFFF97FFD0E1C0E, 0xFFFFFADF8A4F3150, 0x0) Error: SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION Bug check description: This indicates that an exception happened while executing a routine that transitions from non-privileged code to privileged code. This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: nv4_disp.sys . Google query: nv4_disp.sys SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION This one happened while Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun was running in the background. On Sat 3/22/2014 1:05:53 AM GMT your computer crashed crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini032114-01.dmp This was probably caused by the following module: nv4_disp.sys (nv4_disp+0xB9C0E) Bugcheck code: 0x3B (0xC0000005, 0xFFFFF97FFD0E1C0E, 0xFFFFFADF44382850, 0x0) Error: SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION Bug check description: This indicates that an exception happened while executing a routine that transitions from non-privileged code to privileged code. This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: nv4_disp.sys . Google query: nv4_disp.sys SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION This one happened again while playing Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun, this time while attempting to alt+tab out of the game while it was running. On Wed 3/26/2014 4:04:10 AM GMT your computer crashed crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini032514-01.dmp This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x2E890) Bugcheck code: 0x50 (0xFFFFFADE959A2D70, 0x1, 0xFFFFFADF8F6B9132, 0x0) Error: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System company: Microsoft Corporation description: NT Kernel & System Bug check description: This indicates that invalid system memory has been referenced. This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time. Though WhoCrashed says ntoskrnl.exe is the likely culprit, the actual BSoD screen referenced nv4_mini.sys. The BSoD happened while playing Renegade-X, after a match ended and right in the middle of a map change. The current build of the game (as of this post) doesn't transfer to a loading screen when map changing on a server. You get the end-of-match leaderboards and voting, then the scenery goes black as it switches to the new map. That's when the BSoD happened, with hanging sound. On Tue 4/8/2014 2:01:36 PM GMT your computer crashed crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini040814-01.dmp This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x2E890) Bugcheck code: 0x50 (0xFFFFFADE9CEB67A8, 0x1, 0xFFFFF800011A9B28, 0x0) Error: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System company: Microsoft Corporation description: NT Kernel & System Bug check description: This indicates that invalid system memory has been referenced. This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time. This one happened while I was checking Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars for something. I clicked on a menu option (replays menu), then tried to click back to the main menu. The BSoD instantly happened, again with looping, hanging sound. I highly suspect that installing the Open Beta of Renegade-X has something to do with this. Correlation does not equal causation, I know, but the timing still leaves me suspicious as it was the only new program installed right around the time that I started having these problems (Renegade-X's Open Beta 1 was released on February 26, and I installed it around the beginning of March). Furthermore, there is a known issue I and a number of players experienced first hand, in which the uninstaller for Open Beta 1 deleted the entire Start Menu for the current user--a problem that affected not just XP64, but 7 and 8 as well. It leaves open the question as to whether Renegade-X caused some damage to the OS somehow ... That unofficial DX10 patch I mentioned installing in another thread was done way after these problems started. I installed that one on March 28, and the System Restore suggested to me fixed all issues related specifically to that. Initially an IT friend of mine suspected hardware failure: either the hard drive(s), RAM, or malware (though he ruled out malware and thinks hardware issues are more likely due to the erratic nature of these BSoDs). I haven't ruled out that out entirely; so far I've only been able to verify the integrity of my RAM via MemTest86+, as five passes turned up no errors. I haven't yet been able to verify the integrity of my hard drives, however. EDIT: Oh, I should also add that in the case of the crashes where I referenced those other Command and Conquer games (Tiberian Sun, Tiberian Wars), I was doing heavy multitasking in both cases. Both Opera and Firefox were open, with quite a few tabs between them. These are usual computing habits for me, and as mentioned earlier, they haven't caused BSoDs like this before (save for those two from last year where XP64 had absolutely no memory left to continue running). What do you guys think? What might be the culprit here, and what do you think I could do to fix it?

Right now, I'm listening to "12 Mornings" by Jason Shaw. ... I don't know why, but it just makes me think "Windows." Maybe because it reminds me of clouds.mid.