NTVDM CPU error on clean install.

[bizzybody]

I just did a clean install of XP Pro SP3 on a new PC with an AMD LE-1260 CPU and 2 gigs RAM. There cannot be any viruses or malware on it, I've installed nothing but Windows, IE8, Media Player 11, Adobe Reader 9, WinZip 8.1, the latest Firefox (non-beta!), Google Chrome, all current updates from Microsoft Update, Avast 4 and Spybot S&D.

All fresh downloads, not from anything that's been in contact with any other computer.

So now I want to run an old EGA solitaire card game that's never ever had any problem running on any PC all the way back to an IBM model 5150 PC, or on any version of Windows from 3.1 through Vista Ultimate. (I have an Acer Aspire 5315 laptop with Vista on which this old game works perfectly.)

When I run it I get "The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction". Searching the web shows that's an issue with the 16bit MS DOS Subsystem.

I'm wondering if Avast might have something to do with this http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...b;en-us;Q314452

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\VirtualDeviceDrivers\VDD

has C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\aswMonVd.dll in it. The COMMAND.COM in the System32 folder is the correct one.

A post on another forum claimed adding the full path to COMMAND.COM in config.nt fixed this error. shell=c:\windows\system32\command.com /e:2048 /p

Didn't work on this computer.

[cluberti]

If you can get me a crash dump of the command.com process when it crashes out with the ntvdm error, I can probably tell you what's happening.

After installing the debugging tools as per the above linked article, do the following:

1. Create a directory called c:\adplus

2. Open a command prompt and change to the directory where you installed the debugging tools. By default, this is "C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows"

3. Open command.com, but do not start the application install just yet

4. Type the following command in the command prompt opened in step 2:

cscript adplus.vbs -crash -pn command.com -quiet -o c:\adplus

5. Go back to the command.com window and attempt the install again - the crash should occur, and adplus will generate data inside the C:\adplus folder, including a few log files and at least one .dmp file.

Once the debugger finishes, zip up the adplus folder and upload it somewhere (or PM me) and we can have a look at what's causing the error.