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The blue screen of death appeared when I was working on something on my D drive (slave) and I rebooted and went into Safe Mode. So far, so good. I ran CCleaner and Spybot to clean everything out - it was clean. Suddenly, the blue screen appears while in Safe Mode too. It says:
A process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated.
If this is the first time you've seen this screen...etc.
Check to make sure any new hardware (haven't installed anything new) or software (nothing new either) is properly installed. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup options and then select Safe Mode.
I have a master and slave drive installed. I rebuilt the computer about 6 months ago and haven't had any problems until now. It's worked perfectly fine. Here are some of my specs I know offhand (I'm on the blue screen, so I'm concerned about restarting to find the complete specs and making things worse):
Windows XP Home Edition (SP2) - all updates current
Pentium Dual Core 1.60 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 800 MHz FSB
Gigabyte S-Series Motherboard GA-945GCMX-S2
About 6 months ago, I bought everything brand new - motherboard, processor, DVD/CD drive, RAM and made sure it was all compatible and it's worked great until now. I've also tried googling my 0x0000000F4 message, but nothing shows up.
Does anyone have any idea how I can go about fixing this? I hate to just jump in and start trying stuff I'm unsure about. I'm kind of scared to do anything at the moment for fear of wiping out some invaluable stuff on my harddrive. I use this for work and have some items I don't even want to consider losing. Any help will be great appreciated!
Didn't find the information you thought to find? Check out these Similar Threads
One of the many processes or threads crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated. As a result, the system can no longer function. Specific causes are many, and often best resolved by a careful history of the problem and the circumstances of the error message. One user, who experienced this on return from Standby mode on Win XP SP2, found the cause was that Windows was installed on a slave drive; compare KB 330100.
Quote:
Beginning dump of physical memory
Debug the memory dump using our Dump Data Collection Tool and we'll see if anything shows up - caveat .....
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Unfortunately these logs require expert knowledge to analyze and there are only 2 members (who occasionally visit WindowsBBS.com) that have the depth of knowledge necessary. Other members can make observations and suggestions as to how you might proceed toward finding the cause ....
I hope that all your valuable data is backed up or at least resides on the D:\ drive.
Here's what's happened since I first posted. I tried to reboot and it wouldn't boot. In the startup screen under IDEs, it didn't list my main C: drive, but did list my D: drive. I shut down and unplugged my tower and went in and unplugged and replugged all my connections, then rebooted again.
This time, on the startup screen, it showed my C and D drives. (was starting to feel a little less queasy) It actually booted up and I could see my desktop and it seemed to be working normally. I quickly went into System Restore and reset my settings back a few days, hoping that would fix things. After the restore, it restarted - everything was looking good. I then went into system tools to run an analyze of disk deframenter to see if i could clean up things further. I received an error message during analyzing that said i needed to run scandisk or chkdsk. (No blue screen of death so far)
I inserted my Windows XP disk and rebooted to run the Recovery Console and chkdsk C: /r. I rebooted and hit 'r' for the recovery console.
I now see "Which Windows installation would you like to log onto (to cancel, press enter)?" but the only option is 1: D:/WINDOWS
Unfortunately, my Windows OS is on my C drive. For some reason, it's not reading that it's on my C drive. The queasiness is back.
I will try to download the data dump collection tool right now and gather the info if I'm able to boot back up. Thanks for you help.
Here is the info I got from the data dump. I am able to boot up "normally" for the moment, but it seems very unstable and extremely slow at the moment.
(I just saw your comment on unplugging the D drive, but will wait until you see this info before trying anything else)
Opened log file 'c:\debuglog.txt'
Microsoft (R) Windows Debugger Version 6.8.0004.0 X86
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Loading Dump File [C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Dr Watson\user.dmp]
User Mini Dump File: Only registers, stack and portions of memory are available
Comment: 'Dr. Watson generated MiniDump'
Symbol search path is: SRV*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
Executable search path is: C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers
Windows XP Version 2600 (Service Pack 2) MP (2 procs) Free x86 compatible
Product: WinNt, suite: SingleUserTS Personal
Debug session time: Sun Mar 16 09:30:24.000 2008 (GMT-5)
System Uptime: not available
Process Uptime: 0 days 0:31:39.000
........................................................................... ........
This dump file has an exception of interest stored in it.
The stored exception information can be accessed via .ecxr.
(328.400): In-page I/O error ffffffffc0000013 - code c0000006 (first/second chance not available)
eax=7ffd6000 ebx=01eb2008 ecx=00000010 edx=fffffffe esi=00000021 edi=ffffffff
eip=7c96eded esp=00feeb28 ebp=00feebec iopl=0 nv up ei ng nz na pe nc
cs=001b ss=0023 ds=0023 es=0023 fs=003b gs=0000 efl=00000286
ntdll!RtlpAllocateAffinityIndex:
7c96eded 8bff mov edi,edi
0:004> !analyze -v;r;kv;lmtn;.logclose;q
*************************************************************************** ****
* *
* Exception Analysis *
* *
*************************************************************************** ****
*************************************************************************
*** ***
*** ***
*** Your debugger is not using the correct symbols ***
*** ***
*** In order for this command to work properly, your symbol path ***
*** must point to .pdb files that have full type information. ***
*** ***
*** Certain .pdb files (such as the public OS symbols) do not ***
*** contain the required information. Contact the group that ***
*** provided you with these symbols if you need this command to ***
*** work. ***
*** ***
*** Type referenced: kernel32!pNlsUserInfo ***
*** ***
*************************************************************************
*************************************************************************
*** ***
*** ***
*** Your debugger is not using the correct symbols ***
*** ***
*** In order for this command to work properly, your symbol path ***
*** must point to .pdb files that have full type information. ***
*** ***
*** Certain .pdb files (such as the public OS symbols) do not ***
*** contain the required information. Contact the group that ***
*** provided you with these symbols if you need this command to ***
*** work. ***
*** ***
*** Type referenced: kernel32!pNlsUserInfo ***
*** ***
*************************************************************************
ERROR_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000006 - The instruction at "0x%08lx" referenced memory at "0x%08lx". The required data was not placed into memory because of an I/O error status of "0x%08lx".
IO_ERROR: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000013 - {No Disk} There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into drive %hs.
I would be misleading you if I suggested that I could interpret your problem from the dump log - what is clear though is that you have a symbol problem. You must be connected to the Internet while debugging - were you?
Reading a few hits on Google for 0x000000F4 (0x00000003 ....
Check out your RAM - I would not specifically recommend a memory checker as
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Memory checking programs are not adequate because they don't test the memory the way that Windows uses it. Most, if not all, memory checkers use read/write cycles when scanning memory. Since Windows is executing code from the memory, it uses execute cycles. Execute cycles are physically different from read/write cycles and are more vulnerable to parity errors. It is possible for memory checking programs to find parity errors if the memory is extremely faulty.
but you could try the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool The best way of testing RAM is physically. If you have but a single stick move it around the slots and test in each. With a pair of modules test each singly around the slots and in a pair between different pairs of slots - usually no more than 4 slots, so 2 pairs. Not only does this check out the RAM it also checks out the mobo slots.
Other possible causes are a mobo fault or a CPU fault - as noted in the description of the error in my first post the cause of an 0x000000F4 is far from definitive.
While you have the computer booted I would strongly recommend backing up any critical data on the OS drive - to the D:\ or elsewhere - just in case.
I would be interested to know what effect disconnecting the D:\ drive has.
I was connected to the internet while I was debugging. I'm not sure why there was a symbol problem - it's the first time I've downloaded and used that program, so maybe I did something wrong.
I managed to run scandisk (which took about 5 hours total). The only unusual messages I received was during verifying indexes, stage 2 of 5. It stated:
Deleting index entry Double Spiral.ffx in index $I30 of file 21651
Deleting index entry DOUBLE~I.FFX in index $I30 of file 21651
Also I spent the better part of yesterday backing up files from my C drive to D drive while my drive was at least partially functional. It was slow and clunky, but I managed to get a majority of my most important files backed up (hopefully). I was in the process of finishing up my backups when the dreaded BSOD popped up again. Here's what it said this time:
Well, that's where I am at the moment. I wanted to try to backup whatever I could while I was able. I will be testing the RAM physically as well as with Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool, if I'm able, and also disconnecting the D drive and seeing the effect. I'll also google the error comments and see if I can find anything useful there.
Thanks for you continuing assistance - I will be back with updates soon, hopefully with happy results.
I tried disconnecting the D drive and it wouldn't boot up. On the startup, it didn't show my C drive under IDE drives. Periodically, this has happened during my problems - not showing up under IDE drives during boot, only my slave. So, I switched out my IDE cable and my C drive showed up again (maybe this was the problem all along??)
Anyway, I ran the Windows Memory Diagnostic as suggested and ran it 2 Passes with all success. I also took out the RAM physically and it didn't have a problem either.
Since switching out the IDE cable, I haven't seen the BSOD yet (knock on wood). Are there any other tests I can run to see if my harddrive is working properly other than just using it and seeing if a BSOD pops up? Could it be possible that a bad IDE cable could be the root of all these problems? Thanks again for all you help.
Edit: After all this I am now running a chkdsk. I tried to run it from Start>Run>chkdsk /f/ r and received the message: This type of file system is NTFS. Cannot lock current drive. Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time system restarts?
I clicked 'yes' and restarted and it is now running chkdsk, which took several hours last time. Is that error message normal or should I be concerned about it?
Last edited by scanney; 17th March 2008 at 15:24.
Reason: added update
I ran a chkdsk which took several hours and then downloaded the SeaTools for Windows (which prompted me to download Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0) and ran that. (My C drive is a Maxtor) My drive failed the short test and upon further reading, discovered I should download SeaTools for DOS and create a bootup CD for that and run the long test which could possibly fix any disk errors. Whew!
Ran the long test from DOS and it found 1 bad file and then fixed it. Wow. It seems to be working now, though the bootup seems a lot longer than it used to be. Since I've basically been running tests and working the drive like a rented mule for around a solid 6-7 hours, I checked the CPU temp in the bios and it was 72C, so I've now left the side casing off and shut down for a while to let it rest and cool.
Four days of high blood pressure and a nauseating sense of dread is subsiding as it seems to have fixed the problem (knock on wood). I wanted to thank you once again for helping me out and pointing me in the right direction. You are a life (and work) saver! Thank you so very much!
You're welcome Well I do hope you are out of the woods now and would re-emphasise the need to maintain current data backups in case of problems
The CPU temp is excessive, even for an Intel chip I guess (I use AMD) and I would clean out the fan and heatsink of accumulated dust. Under no circumstances remove the heatsink. unless you are conversant with refitting them with fresh thermal compound.
