Article ID: 192463
Article Last Modified on 2/27/2007
APPLIES TO
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Edition
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
- Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Developer Edition
This article was previously published under Q192463
For a Microsoft Windows XP version of this article, see 314084.
SUMMARY
This article describes how to gather more information about a blue-screen error message. Note that these steps may not always provide conclusive answers and may only be a symptom of another problem.
MORE INFORMATION
Event Log Messages
- Configure Windows to write an event log message with bugcheck information. Windows NT Server 4.0 is set to write event log messages by default. Windows NT Workstation is not set by default. To set your system to write an event log message, click to select the Write an event to the system log" check box that is located in the Recovery section of the Startup/Shutdown tab in System properties. This will cause an event log message to be written to the system log.
- The description and format of the event log differs from the format that is displayed when the computer is writing the Memory.dmp file, but the majority of the information is the same. Below is an example of the event log:
This information contains the stop code 0xc000021a and the four parameters. These can be very useful when troubleshooting certain types of stop codes. The parameters will mean different things depending on what type of stop code it is. For information about what the parameters represent, search the Microsoft Knowledge Base for the specific stop code. Not all stop code parameters are covered in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.
To query the Microsoft Knowledge Base, visit the following Microsoft Web page:
Using Dumpchk.exe to Determine Memory Dump Information
If you use Dumpchk.exe from the Service Pack 3 CD, you can determine all of the information that is mentioned earlier and the address of the driver that generated the stop message. This information can often give you a direction to begin troubleshooting. Before you run Dumpchk.exe, be sure to adjust the properties of the command prompt so that the screen buffer size height is set to 999. This height will allow you to scroll back to see the output. Run Dumpchk.exe from the command prompt with the following syntax:
dumpchk.exe Memory.dmp
This is an example of the portions of the output that are most useful:
MachineImageType i386
NumberProcessors 1
BugCheckCode 0xc000021a
BugCheckParameter1 0xe1270188
BugCheckParameter2 0x00000001
BugCheckParameter3 0x00000000
BugCheckParameter4 0x00000000
ExceptionCode 0x80000003
ExceptionFlags 0x00000001
ExceptionAddress 0x8014fb84
Note that not all sections will give the same information. This will depend on the type of stop code. The information above tells you the stop code (0xc000021a) and the parameters (0xe1270188, 0x00000001, 0x00000000, 0x00000000), as well as the address of the driver that called the exception (0x8014fb84). This address can be used to identify the driver name by using the output from running Pstat.exe, which can be found in the Resource Kit.
Dumpchk.exe will also verify that the dump is valid.
Using Pstat.exe to Identify Driver Information
Pstat.exe, a Resource Kit utility, will give you a picture of the processes and drivers currently running on your system. For these purposes, the most useful information will be the list of loaded drivers that appears at the end of the output. All you need to do is run Pstat.exe from the command line. The information given by Pstat.exe can be piped to a file by using the following syntax:
pstat.exe > filename
This is an example of the driver list at the end of the output:
MODULENAME Load Addr Code Data Paged LinkDate
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ntoskrnl.exe 80100000 270272 40064 434816 Sun May 11 00:10:39 1997
Hal.dll 80010000 20384 2720 9344 Mon Mar 10 16:39:20 1997
Aic78xx.sys 80001000 20512 2272 0 Sat Apr 05 21:16:21 1997
Scsiport.sys 801d7000 9824 32 15552 Mon Mar 10 16:42:27 1997
Disk.sys 80008000 3328 0 7072 Thu Apr 24 22:27:46 1997
Class2.sys 8000c000 7040 0 1632 Thu Apr 24 22:23:43 1997
Ino_flpy.sys 801df000 9152 1472 2080 Tue May 26 18:21:40 1998
Ntfs.sys 801e3000 68160 5408 269632 Thu Apr 17 22:02:31 1997
Floppy.sys f7290000 1088 672 7968 Wed Jul 17 00:31:09 1996
Cdrom.sys f72a0000 12608 32 3072 Wed Jul 17 00:31:29 1996
Cdaudio.sys f72b8000 960 0 14912 Mon Mar 17 18:21:15 1997
Null.sys f75c9000 0 0 288 Wed Jul 17 00:31:21 1996
Ksecdd.sys f7464000 1280 224 3456 Wed Jul 17 20:34:19 1996
Beep.sys f75ca000 1184 0 0 Wed Apr 23 15:19:43 1997
Cs32ba11.sys fcd1a000 52384 45344 14592 Wed Mar 12 17:22:33 1997
Msi8042.sys f7000000 20192 1536 0 Mon Mar 23 22:46:22 1998
Mouclass.sys f7470000 1984 0 0 Mon Mar 10 16:43:11 1997
Kbdclass.sys f7478000 1952 0 0 Wed Jul 17 00:31:16 1996
Videoprt.sys f72d8000 2080 128 11296 Mon Mar 10 16:41:37 1997
Ati.sys f7010000 960 9824 48768 Fri Dec 12 15:20:37 1997
Vga.sys f7488000 128 32 10784 Wed Jul 17 00:30:37 1996
Msfs.sys f7308000 864 32 15328 Mon Mar 10 16:45:01 1997
Npfs.sys f7020000 6560 192 22624 Mon Mar 10 16:44:48 1997
Ndis.sys fccda000 11744 704 96768 Thu Apr 17 22:19:45 1997
Win32k.sys a0000000 1162624 40064 0 Fri Apr 25 21:17:32 1997
Ati.dll fccba000 106176 17024 0 Fri Dec 12 15:20:08 1997
Cdfs.sys f7050000 5088 608 45984 Mon Mar 10 16:57:04 1997
Ino_fltr.sys fc42f000 29120 38176 1888 Tue Jun 02 16:33:05 1998
Tdi.sys fc4a2000 4480 96 288 Wed Jul 17 00:39:08 1996
Tcpip.sys fc40b000 108128 7008 10176 Fri May 09 17:02:39 1997
Netbt.sys fc3ee000 79808 1216 23872 Sat Apr 26 21:00:42 1997
El90x.sys f7320000 24576 1536 0 Wed Jun 26 20:04:31 1996
Afd.sys f70d0000 1696 928 48672 Thu Apr 10 15:09:17 1997
Netbios.sys f7280000 13280 224 10720 Mon Mar 10 16:56:01 1997
Parport.sys f7460000 3424 32 0 Wed Jul 17 00:31:23 1996
Parallel.sys f746c000 7904 32 0 Wed Jul 17 00:31:23 1996
Parvdm.sys f7552000 1312 32 0 Wed Jul 17 00:31:25 1996
Serial.sys f7120000 2560 0 18784 Mon Mar 10 16:44:11 1997
Rdr.sys fc385000 13472 1984 219104 Wed Mar 26 14:22:36 1997
Mup.sys fc374000 2208 6752 48864 Mon Mar 10 16:57:09 1997
Srv.sys fc24a000 42848 7488 163680 Fri Apr 25 13:59:31 1997
Pscript.dll f9ec3000 0 0 0
Fastfat.sys f9e00000 6720 672 114368 Mon Apr 21 16:50:22 1997
Ntdll.dll 77f60000 237568 20480 0 Fri Apr 11 16:38:50 1997
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 2377632 255040 1696384
By using the starting address shown under the "Load Addr" column, you can match the exception address to the driver name. Using 8014fb84 as an example, you can determine that Ntoskrnl.exe has the nearest load address below the exception address and is most likely the driver that called the exception. With this information, you can visit the Microsoft Knowledge Base to look for known issues that match your situation.
For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
129845 Blue Screen Preparation Before Contacting Microsoft
Keywords: kbinfo KB192463
