I have had a minor problem from time to time on my home desktop. Specifically, my desktop will sporadically reboot. Now that I have had some time to dig into the problem, I am pretty certain I know what the culprit is. Inspection of the event log shows the following entry.
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Event Type: Information
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Event Source: Save Dump
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Event Category: None
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Event ID: 1000
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Date: 10/7/2008
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Time: 7:46:56 PM
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User: N/A
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Computer: JJTHOME
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Description:
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The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x000000ea (0x85a33020, 0x863f9e88, 0xf7a49cbc, 0x00000001). A full dump was not saved.
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For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
My immediate thought was that the problem must be with a device driver, as that tends to be the case. A quick search on MSDN turned up a list of bug codes contained in the Windows Driver Kit. One specifically calls out the hex code in the System Log entry above--0x000000ea. To quote the article:
This indicates that a thread in a device driver is endlessly spinning.
This usually indicates problem with the hardware itself, or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly. Frequently, this is the result of a bad video card or a bad display driver.
I have cranked up the debugging options on my machine to try and capture a full dump of this event. For some strange reason, my machine is not capturing the actual dump being generated by the "Blue Screen of Death" I know is occurring. It just reboots. In my quest for more knowledge, I may just start hooking debuggers into my system and seeing what I can find out.
In the meantime, though, I have two plans that will bear themselves out in the near- and long-term, respectively.
- Visit NVIDIA and download the latest drivers available for my card, a GeForce 8600 GT. DONE
- Revisit moving to Windows Vista on my desktop, especially now that SP1 is available and resolves a lot of early problems.
#1 by Paul on October 7, 2008 - 10:33 pm UTC
I feel your pain. I had a solaris box that just keep rebooting for a while a couple years back. Swapping hardware was the only solution to that problem.
As far as Vista is concerned I hear SP1 has improved things a lot.
Of course you could explore a 3rd option, use Linux as a base OS and have a VM of WinXP for when you need it.
#2 by JJT on October 8, 2008 - 7:26 am UTC
I have given that some thought. I am still leaning in the direction of getting a netbook--be it an Asus Eee or the Dell Mini--and making that my Linux playground. Granted, doing it on my desktop means I have a lot more hardware to throw at it. Honestly, I have thought about it. Only concern I have, really, is gaming, but I know there are workarounds for that, too.
#3 by Paul on October 8, 2008 - 10:06 am UTC
I don't think a netbook will give you they freedom to tinker with linux as much as you might like. And if you are running games using linux as a base OS and running XP in a VM on top of might be more hassle than it is worth.