Blue screen crash "BAD POOL HEADER" every once in a while

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MrSentry

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Jun 14, 2014
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Hi. I have a custom-built desktop PC that I've had for a few years now (with some modifications over the years) and every once in a while I get a "bad pool header" crash. When I say every once in a while, I mean like maybe once a month, so I've never been too worried about it. Now its kind of concerning me as it just happened very suddenly, and I was hoping someone had some insight on how to prevent it from happening. Here is the event viewer log from right after the crash:

1 Critical Error in the last hour: (ID) 41, (Source) Kernel-Power
1 Error in the last hour: (ID) 1001, (Source) BugCheck
1 Warning in the last hour: (ID) 219, (Source) Kernel-PnP

System specs:
AMD FX 4100 Quad-Core Processor @ 3.6 GHz
Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
8GB RAM
1 TB HD
Coolermaster 750W PSU

Also, not sure if this makes any difference, but I just got back from a trip on which I brought the computer with me, and set it up back at home today. The crash happened about 3-4 hours after I set it up. Again, thank you to anyone who can help with this issue!
 
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MrSentry

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Jun 14, 2014
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PSU brand is Coolermaster, and the product name is just "750W". The product number on the unit is RS-750-ACAA-A1

I'm not sure if that's problem though, as I looked it up and kernel-power error means that the system did not shut down correctly. It seems that you would get that same error for anything that crashed or froze your computer, or even if you shut it down when it was working fine by holding the power button, unplugging it, etc...

I was more looking at the "BugCheck" error, because that probably contributed to the crash and I have no idea what it means. Any ideas on that?

Thanks again for the help.
 
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MarkW

MarkW

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Dec 7, 2009
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Well, what do you think a power outage is to a computer? LOL

Power supplies use capacitors to try and get smooth reliable power to your system. But like with most things, there are the good, the bad, and the ugly capacitors out there. The good ones cost more than the bad or the ugly ones. The ugly ones cost less than the good ones, and the bad ones cost less than the ugly ones. But someone a long time ago discovered that you could use bad ones, and most people would simply replace the power supply when it failed, without asking for a replacement unit. So guess what some companies use...

Need more data on the other 2... Use WhoCrashed to parse those files please...
 
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johnbl

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Nov 4, 2012
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a kernel power entry log 41 is normal operation after a bugcheck. It just indicates that the system did not complete a normal shutdown process and that the system will have to do extra checking on the next boot.

focus on fixing the cause of the bugcheck (why your driver data in memory was corrupted)
 
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MarkW

MarkW

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When the kernel, which is the core of the operating system detects that the power is failing, it has a very brief time to write a few bytes to the hard drive before the power is used up. So it can write out that there was a Kernel Power Event just before the power drops.

Now if you were sitting there, you know that the power in the room did not drop. So that means that the power supply was most likely the reason that the power inside of the computer dropped for just long enough to make the system reset. And the fact that it was able to restart immediately after the reset indicates that the power supply has at least one capacitor failing. I deal with this almost on a daily basis here.

Are there other things that could cause a system to reset? Yes. But at least 98% of the time, this is a power supply problem.
 
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johnbl

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Compare the time stamps for the bugcheck and the kernel power 41 log entry. The bugcheck should be before the kernel power 41 enrty. The kernel power entry should be on the next reboot of the system to indicate the system did not do a normal shutdown. During a true power failure windows will not have time to flush logs to disk and this data would just be lost in buffers anyway.



 
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MarkW

MarkW

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I don't see any timestamps at all.

All I see is this from the first post in this thread:

1 Critical Error in the last hour: (ID) 41, (Source) Kernel-Power
1 Error in the last hour: (ID) 1001, (Source) BugCheck
1 Warning in the last hour: (ID) 219, (Source) Kernel-PnP
 
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johnbl

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Nov 4, 2012
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here is some info on how to resolve a bod pool header problem:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2777750/bad-pool-header-bsod.html
Sorry, just did not want to type it up.

a bad pool header, if caused by software requires that you run verifier otherwise you are looking a memory dumps of drivers that are victims of corruption rather than the cause of the memory corruption.
You can also put your memory dump on a server and post a link. There are many known bad drivers that corrupt memory. Just looking at the device driver list may help isolate the cause of corruption.



 
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johnbl

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don't trust me, just test it for your self.
power cycle your own machine and reboot and look at the logs.
or if you like trigger a keyboard bugceck wait several mins, reboot and look at the logs.
(don't auto reboot)
\http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/keyboard-ninja-kill-windows-with-the-blue-screen-of-death-in-3-keystrokes/



 
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johnbl

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Nov 4, 2012
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if verifier flags are not set, whocrashed will just name the victim driver of the memory corruption. Sometimes you get lucky and a driver corrupts its own data and gets blamed and you update the driver. Most of the time it is the driver that has data in memory next to the bad drivers data that does the corruption. Verifier will attempt to bugcheck the system at the time of corruption rather than later when the corrupted data is used.

(all this assumes memtest has passed, system file check is ok, malware not found, no overclocking drivers,...)




 
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