I've just finished reformatting and reinstalling about 14 million programs on my Win XP SP2 system, because I kept getting the BSOD as listed in post title. (Big thanks to dclive for getting me started on the troubleshooting.)
First let me say I'm nowhere near a system expert, and if this particular issue has already been discussed and solved, I apologize in advance.
I would get the BSODs at least once a month, under no discernible pattern that I could find--i.e. I or the computer were not doing the same thing every time it happened. Sometimes I would come back after the system had been idle for several hours, only to find the BSOD.
It began to happen more frequently, always pointing to USBPORT.SYS (as dclive reported to me, after kindly reading my Minidumps). He suggested disabling all things USB on my system to see what would happen. Problem was, I needed 90% of my USB devices on a daily basis to do my work.
After the crashes started becoming more frequent, I decided to bite the bullet and reformat and reinstall. Part of the reason for this is, this is my first solo, from-scratch system build. I used an Intel mobo--the 925XCV. If any of you other folks have also used this board, you will also know that Intel says their Express Installer CD that comes w/the board will not work under SP2. I had downloaded all the drivers from the Intel website ahead of time, and installed them after the OS was installed.
Problem was, because the Express Installer CD couldn't be used, and therefore didn't install the drivers in the order Intel said they should be installed--and because I didn't know there was a certain order until well after the fact--I installed the downloaded drivers in the order I thought I needed them.
Unfortunately, as I found out later looking thru troubleshooting docs at Intel's website, the "Chipset Software INF Installation Utility" should have been installed first--that was "critical", in Intel's words. I couldn't recall which driver I had installed first, but I figured my odds were only about 50-50 I'd installed the INF drivers first. Being a noob at this, I decided I had hosed up the install, and figured it was a good learning experience to do it all over again. My reasoning at the time was that the out-of-order install on the initial system had a high probability of causing my problems, as one of the items the INF drivers installed was to tell Windows how to interact w/the USB ports on the mobo.
But one thing that had always bugged me on the first install, was why the crashes didn't start happening right away. It was 2-3 weeks after the initial install before the first crash. I thought, at the time, that it may have been connected to some device I'd installed, but uninstalling all those devices still yielded no solution.
So after I reinstalled the OS on the fresh system, I made sure to install the INF driver set first, then most everything else. I saved some of the lower-priority stuff till later.
One app I waited to install was my disk defragger, Diskeeper. (I'd installed it on the first go-round, but a few weeks after I'd gotten the system set up. I thought that "Set It and Forget It" feature might be nice to have.) I waited to install it, because I knew as soon as it was on, it would want to defrag, and I wanted to wait until I had most everything installed so it could get it all at once.
So, about 10 days after my second fresh install, I installed Diskeeper. I know what you want to hear is that the system immediately crashed. No, sorry, nothing so clear-cut. Diskeeper sets itself up as a Service--DKSERVICE.EXE--and will not run w/out it. On the first install, I had the DKSERVICE running, as well as the Set It and Forget It utility. On the second install, I installed it and ran the defragger manually. While it ran, I poked around the Executive Software website, looking for a way to keep the DKSERVICE from making my ZoneAlarm icon "traffic flash" all the time. While I was there, I stumbled across this:
Diskeeper link
Go down the page to "System Issues/Problems" and click on it. It will expand. Down the list you will see "Diskeeper causes the system to produce an error "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"". It references Windows 2000, but perhaps some of the info applies here, esp the error message.
There's a long trouble-shooting section, that says in essence, you have a buggy driver. Of course, it doesn't say that your system was working perfectly fine before Diskeeper, buggy driver and all. It does want you to basically uninstall or disable lots of stuff until you find the problem.
Now, I know these error messages are slightly different, and they may not actually be tha same at all. But the coincidence... Hmm... It would certainly explain why the BSODs seemed to happen at different times--they may not have been different times at all, but when the background defragging was starting up or running.
At this point I'm thinking, "how bad do I really want the Set It and Forget It" thing?" I've disabled the DKSERVICE, and will only enable it to run manual scans, for the time being. What I want to see is if, w/that service disabled, I get any BSODs. If I can go a month w/out one, then I will enable the service, and try another month to see if I get a BSOD.
If I do, I'll lay money that Diskeeper isn't playing nicely w/others. Then again, my fresh reinstall, with the drivers put on in the correct order, may also be the solution. But I wanted to post this now, for those of you getting this crash, to ask: do you also have Diskeeper installed?
I'll repost if I discover anything new.
First let me say I'm nowhere near a system expert, and if this particular issue has already been discussed and solved, I apologize in advance.
I would get the BSODs at least once a month, under no discernible pattern that I could find--i.e. I or the computer were not doing the same thing every time it happened. Sometimes I would come back after the system had been idle for several hours, only to find the BSOD.
It began to happen more frequently, always pointing to USBPORT.SYS (as dclive reported to me, after kindly reading my Minidumps). He suggested disabling all things USB on my system to see what would happen. Problem was, I needed 90% of my USB devices on a daily basis to do my work.
After the crashes started becoming more frequent, I decided to bite the bullet and reformat and reinstall. Part of the reason for this is, this is my first solo, from-scratch system build. I used an Intel mobo--the 925XCV. If any of you other folks have also used this board, you will also know that Intel says their Express Installer CD that comes w/the board will not work under SP2. I had downloaded all the drivers from the Intel website ahead of time, and installed them after the OS was installed.
Problem was, because the Express Installer CD couldn't be used, and therefore didn't install the drivers in the order Intel said they should be installed--and because I didn't know there was a certain order until well after the fact--I installed the downloaded drivers in the order I thought I needed them.
Unfortunately, as I found out later looking thru troubleshooting docs at Intel's website, the "Chipset Software INF Installation Utility" should have been installed first--that was "critical", in Intel's words. I couldn't recall which driver I had installed first, but I figured my odds were only about 50-50 I'd installed the INF drivers first. Being a noob at this, I decided I had hosed up the install, and figured it was a good learning experience to do it all over again. My reasoning at the time was that the out-of-order install on the initial system had a high probability of causing my problems, as one of the items the INF drivers installed was to tell Windows how to interact w/the USB ports on the mobo.
But one thing that had always bugged me on the first install, was why the crashes didn't start happening right away. It was 2-3 weeks after the initial install before the first crash. I thought, at the time, that it may have been connected to some device I'd installed, but uninstalling all those devices still yielded no solution.
So after I reinstalled the OS on the fresh system, I made sure to install the INF driver set first, then most everything else. I saved some of the lower-priority stuff till later.
One app I waited to install was my disk defragger, Diskeeper. (I'd installed it on the first go-round, but a few weeks after I'd gotten the system set up. I thought that "Set It and Forget It" feature might be nice to have.) I waited to install it, because I knew as soon as it was on, it would want to defrag, and I wanted to wait until I had most everything installed so it could get it all at once.
So, about 10 days after my second fresh install, I installed Diskeeper. I know what you want to hear is that the system immediately crashed. No, sorry, nothing so clear-cut. Diskeeper sets itself up as a Service--DKSERVICE.EXE--and will not run w/out it. On the first install, I had the DKSERVICE running, as well as the Set It and Forget It utility. On the second install, I installed it and ran the defragger manually. While it ran, I poked around the Executive Software website, looking for a way to keep the DKSERVICE from making my ZoneAlarm icon "traffic flash" all the time. While I was there, I stumbled across this:
Diskeeper link
Go down the page to "System Issues/Problems" and click on it. It will expand. Down the list you will see "Diskeeper causes the system to produce an error "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"". It references Windows 2000, but perhaps some of the info applies here, esp the error message.
There's a long trouble-shooting section, that says in essence, you have a buggy driver. Of course, it doesn't say that your system was working perfectly fine before Diskeeper, buggy driver and all. It does want you to basically uninstall or disable lots of stuff until you find the problem.
Now, I know these error messages are slightly different, and they may not actually be tha same at all. But the coincidence... Hmm... It would certainly explain why the BSODs seemed to happen at different times--they may not have been different times at all, but when the background defragging was starting up or running.
At this point I'm thinking, "how bad do I really want the Set It and Forget It" thing?" I've disabled the DKSERVICE, and will only enable it to run manual scans, for the time being. What I want to see is if, w/that service disabled, I get any BSODs. If I can go a month w/out one, then I will enable the service, and try another month to see if I get a BSOD.
If I do, I'll lay money that Diskeeper isn't playing nicely w/others. Then again, my fresh reinstall, with the drivers put on in the correct order, may also be the solution. But I wanted to post this now, for those of you getting this crash, to ask: do you also have Diskeeper installed?
I'll repost if I discover anything new.
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