Resolved How to force a BSOD

Just an interesting thing that happened to me the weekend before last.

First off, the specs

WIN 7 ULTIMATE clone with an Athlon X2 5200+ CPU 32 bit
MB is an ASUS M2N68 AM PLUS with 4 gig ram
Graphics card is a GTX 5500 ti

So I was imaging the hard drive using the win 7 backup app. It was near the end so I plugged in a 2nd external HD and started a 2nd instance of backup to have two backups. When the first one finished, I wasnt able to unmount it. I kept trying and trying and it would'nt unmount. Oh! It's a WD MyBook

So after a while, I just unplugged it. And of course, the 2nd MyBook would also not unmount after it was finished doing the image.
After several minutes, I just unplugged it also.Looking at the USB hardware icon, it said both external HDs were still connected. I did a reboot, and on shutdown screen, the little pinwheel just spun and spun and after 10 minutes, it bluescreened--a 0x9F.

I rebooted the machine and it couldnt find the hard drive. Booted a 2nd time and all was good. NTFS on the main hard drive cleaned itself. Did a SeaTools scan and it reported all was well

So, I guess you cant run two instances of backup at the same time. I wont do that again

Also, this article by Microsoft seems to suggest the paging file got ******* up somehow


https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-when-you-shut-down-or-restart-windows-server

Regards all

 

Ummm, note that MS article says it applies to Windows Server, not W7. And it says it happens when the Page File has been moved from the default location (the boot drive) and put on another drive, with no PF on the boot drive.

Does that scenario apply to you?

Note it is fine to have a Windows managed PF on another drive, but a PF should still be left on the boot drive just for dump files. And unless you are a true expert in virtual memory management, just let Windows manage the Page File(s) size, regardless where it is located.

****

If I had to guess, I would say the problem occurred when you connected a second HD and started a second backup before the first was complete. "In theory" you should be able to connect and disconnect USB devices (when they are not active) without causing problems. But frankly, USB is not a very reliable interface "in the real world". Maybe the first drive momentarily dropped connection and there was a sudden shift in drive letters? I don't know. Or maybe your backup program got confused. At this point, no way of telling.

Of course, you could try to duplicate the problem by doing it all again, but I personally wouldn't risk it.

 

Yeah, I noticed it saying server, but I figured close enough, especially when it stated the bsod happens about 10 minutes after initiating the shutdown. All the other articles did not seem relevant, so I stuck with the paging file explanation

Two facts, also:
A) logging did not put the 0x9f bsod in it's file-probably because it happened during the shutdown routine

B) I re-imaged again, just to make sure the first ones could be corrupted. All went well because I did it one after another.

Regards