XP Pro x64 - occasional BSOD on boot

I have to say that my experience with the 32-bit version of XP has been great.

I haven't gotten a crash or BSOD for the last two-two and a half years, and I only reformat on every motherboard swap.

My system's uptime has an average of 1-1,5 month, but sometimes I have to reboot because of driver & windows updates...

My XP installation loads in 15 seconds even after a year of hardcore usage.

I have XP x64 installed on my secondary AMD rig and it literally flies, boots up in seconds and the system feels very, very snappy.

Having recently upgraded to 4gigs of RAM on my main rig, I though installing the x64 version of XP would be the logical thing to do.

Thankfully there are drivers for all my hardware, so I went ahead and did a fresh install of XP x64 SP2.

Everything went fine. I have to say I was kinda underwhelmed with the bootup time, it takes twice as long to boot into XP x64 on my C2D rig. It also doesn't feel faster than XP 32bit either (perhaps AMD's 64bit implementation is better? I though they were practically the same).

Either way, everything worked fine but then I run into a problem.

Occasionally, when booting, XP gives me a BSOD in the loading screen.

Funny thing is, there isn't a driver name listen in the BSOD, only the stop code.

And each time, the STOP code is different. One time it was 'IRQ_LESS_OR_EQUAL...', the next it was 'BAD_POOL_etc' and so on. All of these STOP codes point to a driver issue though.

I checked the minidumps and traced the problem to the driver 'classpnp.sys' which apparently has something to do with the I/O system.

So my main suspects are the Intel Matrix Storage drivers, perhaps there's a conflict somewhere.

Has anyone run into a similar problem with XP x64?

Since your problems started not only after installing the 64-bit version of XP, but also after upgrading to 4GB of RAM, I think I might be suspect of the RAM (or a RAM related issue like timings, Vdimm, etc.) If you haven't already, try running the latest version of Memtest86+ w/ all four sticks installed...

Memtest86+ 2.01
http://www.memtest.org/

The memory is fine, I'd been runnning it for 2 months on XP 32bit before I moved to x64.

Either way it passes 5+ hours of memtest without errors. Its also 2x2gb (2 sticks), so it doesn't really strain the controller...

You might want to check the Event Viewer logs for anything related to the BSOD's or classpnp.sys driver errors... Start | Run | Type eventvwr.msc in the Run box, and right click--> "Properties" the latest critical errors you've received (critical errors are in Red). Copy and paste (use the "Copy to Clipboard" button under the arrow buttons in the "Event Properties" window) the latest critical error message(s) as they appear under the "Description" field, and post them in this thread.

After you hit the "Copy to Clipboard" button in the "Event Properties" dialog, the contents in the Description field will be copied to the ClipBook Viewer (ClipBoard). You can then just paste the contents into your post, as there is no Edit-->Select All-->Copy function in ClipBook. In addition you could type clipbrd in the Run box, which will open the ClipBook Viewer containing the copied text from the Event Properties dialog... then perform a File-->Save As, and save the file with a *.txt extension. You could then perform a Edit-->Select All, then do a copy/paste of the text in your new post... so you have a couple different options.

Also, open the System Information tool by typing msinfo32 in the Run box | Expand "Components" | Highlight "Problem Devices", and look for any problems that might be listed there.

redduc900 said:

You might want to check the Event Viewer logs for anything related to the BSOD's or classpnp.sys driver errors... Start | Run | Type eventvwr.msc in the Run box, and right click--> "Properties" the latest critical errors you've received (critical errors are in Red). Copy and paste (use the "Copy to Clipboard" button under the arrow buttons in the "Event Properties" window) the latest critical error message(s) as they appear under the "Description" field, and post them in this thread.

After you hit the "Copy to Clipboard" button in the "Event Properties" dialog, the contents in the Description field will be copied to the ClipBook Viewer (ClipBoard). You can then just paste the contents into your post, as there is no Edit-->Select All-->Copy function in ClipBook. In addition you could type clipbrd in the Run box, which will open the ClipBook Viewer containing the copied text from the Event Properties dialog... then perform a File-->Save As, and save the file with a *.txt extension. You could then perform a Edit-->Select All, then do a copy/paste of the text in your new post... so you have a couple different options.

Also, open the System Information tool by typing msinfo32 in the Run box | Expand "Components" | Highlight "Problem Devices", and look for any problems that might be listed there.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.

I should probably mention that I've already done everything humanly possible trying to pinpoint the error.

The event viewer does not report any errors, probably because the BSOD occurs during the texmode driver loading phase.

Due to the nature of the error, even the minidump analyzer tool from the WinDev kit could not exactly pinpoint the culprit - after grinding away at the minidump, it just reported that the most probable cause seemed to be 'classpnp.sys', a Windows own driver that should work properly no matter what...

Also, msinfo32 does not report anything out of the ordinary.

Once inside XP x64, I get no crashes or erratic behaviour.

Just to confirm this is a software issue, I did a restore on my 32bit XP installation, and sure enough, no problems.

I'm almost 100% sure this is a driver bug issue, and that's why I posted - to see if anyone with similar hardware (mobo, raid controller, etc.) has run into a similar problem...

The problem continues.

Everything checks out fine, hardware-wise.

32bit XP Pro is rock-solid, I've never seen a BSOD with it.

I have tried 3 different XP x64 versions (without SP2, with SP2, with SP2 + nlited drivers)

The elusive, occasional BSOD on boot persists.

I'm not easily stumped in these matters but right now I can safely say I've run out of things to try.

The BSOD occurs after the XP loading bar, after the keyboard lights blink, while the monitor is black right before showing the logon window.

During use, the system appears to be rock-stable.

The BSOD is totally random, I can reboot for 5-6 times in a row and everything works fine, and then BSOD after the loading screen.

Since I don't use particularly weird hardware, I wanted to ask if anyone's ever run into this before.

I'm guessing that there must be other users out there with Abit IP35 Pros and ICH9R RAID 0 that use XP Pro X64, right?