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Identifying Bad app referenced in Blue Screen of death

I nee help in identifying what is causing a recurring Blue Screen of death. (Message: A Fatal exception OE has occured at 014F:BFF9A08C). This is kind of a generic question as it happends to me (WIN98 SE) and my father just started having it happen (Win 95a) so I am hoping that the technique to identify problem will apply in both operating systems.

In my machine the memory address is the same each time. I have tried to look for a "memory map" which shows what is running at that specific point and can't find one in WIndows or Norton Utilities (which is installed). I thought I have seen a "map" before but can't remember where.

This problem doesn't occur often enough to try the old solution of shutting everything down and selectively adding apps to find which is broken - the problem may occur on my machine once every 4-6 days and this is my main production machine which I cannot take down for that long.

Anybody know how to find a memory map (perhaps in Windows or Norton Utliities or some shareware/freeware product)?

Thanks

Dave

pleasenospam

I have the same problem and the same frustration. The Microsoft knowledge stuff gives
one a laundry list of things to try sequentially. If you go through that your are completely
disoriented long before you finish the task. And even then it might not work.

My own feeling is that more than one version of critical control files are on the machine
and that the system gets into the wrong one. However, there is something else at work here.

If you look closely at the structure of these operating systems, you will note that they
tend to modify critical programs "on the fly" to fit the
needs of the task at hand. In
the old main frame days, this type of thing was done with index registers that left the
main program intact. Thus, if there was a problem, it would be the index register that
got corrupted. Anyway, today's problems are probably related to multi-tasking. If
one is careful not to have too many files open at once there is less of chance for corruption.
Also, it helps a whole lot to just reboot the system at intervals to bring in fresh
copies of everything.

pleasenospam

Also, it is possible that we don't allow enough time for automatic cleanup processes to
work after we finish one task and start another. I think there is a strong chance that
the operating system is not doing a good enough job in handling priorities in this regard.
Again, this would be a weakness in multi-tasking that would require us to be a little
careful about pushing the computer to start something new right away.

If you read about this in the various articles, you should find mention of "system stability"
with valiant attempts by Microsoft to make newer operating systems more stable.

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LeeTutor

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pjknibbs

Actually, the address you quote (014F:BFF9A08C) is somewhere in the top gigabyte of address space, which is reserved for 32-bit operating system components--so the fault address indicates something like KERNEL32.DLL or something like that, and tells you nothing about what actually caused the crash. (Kernel crashes are almost invariably caused by bad drivers, although the weak memory protection in Win9x means that a user-mode program is also capable of crashing the system in this way--it's just a lot harder).

HJohnson

You could also try running MSCONFIG (from start/run) and checking which apps are being run/loaded. This program will allow you turn off those that you don't want.

dbish

ASKER

That is a great link. (The higher priority computer problem is my father. We recently took the DIMM out and put back in and upgraded a modem - both items re covered as possibilities in the list).

Thanks.

Dave