XP Will no Longer Boot.

[john the swift]

hey all.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooook.

Heres the problem. my friend has a fresh install of XP SP3 and installed comand and conquer the first decade. ever since his computer will boot to the windows logon screen and crashes just before it loads.

the blue screen it displays is:
BAD_POOL_CALLER
0x000000c2 stop error

no other information displayed... this occurs in both safe mode and normal boot.
all documents and information can be accessed using a bootable linux CD

Any ideas?
Reinstalling is an option but not preferable as he has only just had me reinstall it and got ALL his games installed again....

Thanks all!
John

 

[aford10]

Try booting off the XP disc, and doing a install repair. It will repair the system files without erasing anything else. It could be a bad MS update.

 

[Saga Lout]

my friend has a fresh install of XP SP3 and installed comand and conquer the first decade. ever since his computer will boot to the windows logon screen and crashes just before it loads.

Have you tried uninstalling the game to see if that cures the problem?

 

[aford10]

I've got that game installed on my PC at home, and haven't had any kind of problem. I love C&C.

The BAD_POOL_CALLER error, smells more of a windows issue, than a program file issue. Doesn't hurt to try though.

 

[john the swift]

Thanks for the replys, as for uninstalling the game and doing a repair.
the repair runs! but.... when it hits 'completing installation' it gets the identical blue screen and crashes.
for the uninstall the game idea, please read my entire post i beleive i did mention that i cant get into windows period. thus i cannot un-install it.

I dont mean to be rude there, any ideas are very welcome.

Strongly considering formatting the entire OS and re-installing as even a repair failed! as well as running /fixmbr /fixboot /chkdsk /r chkdsk /p
and i have tried every stick of ram in every slot and even tried my own 2gig stick of ram in his pc and it made no difference. ( read bad_pool_caller can be caused by bad ram)

Thanks!

 

[aford10]

Boot off the disc, into the repair console. At the command line, you can uninstall programs. Try using this guide.
http://www.pcterritory.net/2009/04/uninstall-and-delete-program-with.html

 

[john the swift]

Damn, useful link (favourited >.>)
i gave up and formatted the OS hdd after retrieving the documents with linux ( damn 300 gig backup after only a month! )
did a full format, no problems yet. will post if error returns.
(still interested in what the error could have been .....)

 

[aford10]

Well, that's one way to go at it. Good luck.

 

[john the swift]

Best answer selected by John The Swift.

 

[john the swift]

Hey all. PROBLEM SOLVED!

Ended up reinstalling entire os, did all updates all basic programs e.t.c. no problems
Sort of annoying never found out the real problem but eh....

thanks for the input mate

John