STOP 0X000000F4 Bluescreen Error

Hello everyone,

I am having a problem with my Gericom laptop, running windows XP home. I bought it about a year and 2 months ago, maybe a little more, (so it is no longer under warranty) and all the time i've had it it has functioned absolutely fine. I recently brought it home with me (i shattered my heel and have been forced to move in with my parents for a bit until it's healed) to work on some essays, and it has started bluescreening seemingly randomly.

I'll start it up, and it'll work fine a for a little bit, then it will start to work very slowly. I'm not doing anything particularly intensive - mostly using MSN messenger, and internet explorer. I'm running norton antivirus, and regularly clean the system out with ad-aware personal edition. I've never had any problems with it before. Anyway, after a little bit it seems to almost 'give up' after struggling for a bit, then it bluescreens, giving me this information:

"STOP: 0x000000F4 (0x00000003, 0x82C68DA0, 0x82C68F14, 0x805F9F88)
A PROCESS OR THREAD CRUCIAL TO SYSTE, OPERATION HAS UNEXPECTEDLY EXITED OR BEEN TERMINATED "

It then starts the dump of physical memory, and then it has to be restarted, only to go through the process again. I didn't install anything between it working and when this started happening, I've tried running windows update, scanning for virii, closing down some un-needed processes, but to no avail.

I'm at the end of my tether here, I really hope someone can help me! I would like to avoid cleaning out the hard drive and re-installing completely, although this is an option if it would definitely fix it I guess.

I did google the error message before and some pages speculated it could be to do with memory failure, is this true?

Any help you could give me would be greatly received,

Thanks in advance,

Matt

 

Format the minidump with kd

Hi,

Usually Bugcheck is caused by invalid paging I/O or access violation. You have to format the minidump in using kd in order to find out the root cause.

1) Install microsoft debugging tools from http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/installx86.mspx
2) Create folder c:\symbols
3) Download and install the http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/installx86.mspx
4) Locate your latest memory.dmp file- C:\windows\Minidump\Mini011005-01.dmp or whatever
4) Open a CMD prompt and cd\program files\debugging tools for windows\
5) Type the following stuff:

Code:
c:\program files\debugging tools>kd -z C:\windows\Minidump\Mini011005-01.dmp
kd> .logopen c:\debuglog.txt
kd> .sympath srv*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
kd> .reload;!analyze -v;r;kv;lmnt;.logclose;q

Now you have a debuglog.txt in c:\, open it in notepad and post the content to this thread.

 

ok, i tried to do what you suggested, but it keeps bluescreening before i can get it all done! i'll keep trying, although i'll also explained what just happened too:

it worked fine for a while, while i was downloading the first file and creating the symbols directory. then just as i tried to install the debugging tool, it crashed. this time with a different error. it died before i managed to write down the exact stop code, but it said something about a kernel and a page fault. anyway, then i restarted and thought id run chkdsk, thinking maybe my hard drive had something wrong with it. i got into xp, scheduled a chkdsk /r next time i rebooted, and rebooted the computer. it passed all tests apart from 'checking for file information' or something similar (the 4th one) where it got to ~36% and then crashed to a blue screen again! this time the error was 'STOP c000021a UNKNOWN HARD ERROR'
so i restart it again, and instead of getting the xp boot screen, i get:

'Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the above file.'

what do i do now?! i'm not normally this bad with computers, but once we get to blue screens and technical error messages it goes over my head, please help!

 

right, so i managed to do what you said above eventually, and this is what happened:

this was with the most recent dump file, but ill do it with last nights dump file too, just to see whether they are consistent, seeings as i have got multiple error messages. hope this helps you help me!

 

ok, i did the same thing with the dump file from last night, and these were the results. seems to be along the same lines.

 

NT Status code c000000e

Hi,

Your windows is crashed with bugcheck code 7A with NT status code c000000e which is related faulty ram or bad paging space.

Suggestion
1. run chkdsk /r
2. realloacate paging space
3. run memtest to stress test the ram

 

thanks very much for your help, but i'm a bit lost when it comes to paging space. how do i reallocate it?
ill download memtest too, and try running chkdsk again, then i'll re-post!
once again, thanks very much for your help.

 

i have managed to use chkdsk /r successfully just now, and it reported that the volume was clean.

i also managed to use memtest to test the reliability of the RAM, and it ran for over an hour and reported no errors.

the computer seems a little more stable (i managed to do all these things without bsod'ing or crashing once, and that record is continuing - touch wood - while i am writing this...) but i'd still like to know how to 'reallocate the paging space' just in case it starts again.

once again, thank you very much everyone for your help.

 

Hi,

Procedure to delete paging space.
1) Boot into recovery and delete pagefile.sys
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;255205
2) Install windows eraser and delete pagefile.sys

I'm still waiting for the system event 1001/1003.