Blue screen BAD_POOL_HEADER win7 booting

k-l-e

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Hi!

Today my computer randomly got a blue screen. I didnt see where it happened because i wasnt present with my computer. When i tried to restart it, the blue screen happened after "windows is starting up". This is from where the boot was from the harddrive, and the computer restarted itself before i could read any of the blue screen.

I tried to boot from the win7 64bit install DVD. But here this BAD_POOL_HEADER BSOD happens. Ive tried with just 1 ram stick but it keeps happening. Also reseted the BIOS settings to default, didnt help.

What makes it so difficult is that the same thing happens in safe mode. I also tried to boot with the settings from last successfull boot, blue screen again..... I might have not updated everything to the latest drivers. So i assume this is a software problem.

Im so confused. I have no idea how to fix it. Any help?

Sepcs:

- Motherboard: Asus P8P67 LE 1155 socket
- CPU: i7-2600k 1155 socket
- Western Digital caviar black, 2TB 64mbit cache, 6gb/s
- Graphic card: Geforce GTX 295
- PSU: Corsair TX 650W
- Memory: kingston 1333 MhZ pc-10600, 6gb
- Corsair H50 watercooler
- Samsung SpinPoint F1 500GB SATA2,
- Antec twelve hundred big tower
 

k-l-e

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What can i do when the blue screens keep happening in every mode???? Should i insert a secondary hard drive and format the corrupted hard drive from the secondary?
 

muz_j

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Made any hardware changes to your computer lately?

Any other changes at all you can think of, prior to the problems starting?


The fact that your problem is occuring in Safe Mode suggests it's likely to be hardware related (or even more likely device drivers relating to a hardware device). I'm not saying that's definitely it - but that's the likely scenario (based on the very small amount of info you've provided).


The only Technet Article for that error that relates SPECIFICALLY to Windows 7 is this one:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976443

Which is due to an iSCSI device problem.
That's not likely to be your issue.

The article below is a more generalised example of this Blue Screen Error, which is a better example of the sorts of things that can cause this type of fault:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934177

Note how this problem effects both Windows XP and Windows Vista. You need to keep an open mind when troubleshooting this issue, as you may not find your fix if you concentrate purely on Windows 7 related technical articles (as Windows 7 hasn't been out as long as the older OS'es, so won't have the vast array of troubleshooting articles written for it - yet).
Win 7's effectively an update to Vista anyway, so anything that effects Vista is likely to have a potential impact on Windows 7.

Read this article too, which will explain the basics of interpreting a Blue Screen:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc750081.aspx

If you can get a screen grab of the BSOD or a kernel or mini dump from your system, then it would be relatively easy to determine what software is responsible. Note in the article above it discusses the memory address where the error occured. This will usually highlight the piece of software responsible.

If it happens again - take a photo of the screen and hopefully you haven't set your computer to automatically reboot after a blue screen as that setting makes it next to impossible to analyse the BSOD when it occurs (which means you'll need to have a look at the System Event log, plus whatever dump files you have available).


See how you go....it seems intimidating to begin with, but if you take your time, BSOD's are dead easy to solve.


 

k-l-e

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i got a picture of the blue screen for normal startup, i turned off automatic restart under blue screens.

img7304s.jpg


It looks like its the file iaStor.sys thats causing the problem here.
 

vvhocare5

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Did you change the BIOS setting for the drive interface? I have seen people change the drive interface after installing Win 7 and that WILL cause a blue screen.

Am I one of the few that keeps a bootable USB drive around? When you get a blue screen pop in something else that is bootable and see where that gets you...
 

k-l-e

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i didnt change the BIOS settings for the drive interface. I havent changed anything at all in the bios except for boot priorities.

But now im using a old clean hard drive to install windows 7 on. The corrupted one is unplugged. And i intend to format the corrupted one after ive done a clean win7 install on the new hard drive. I hope that works, because the only solution for this problem seem to be to format it. I dont care whats on the hard drive, its only 3 weeks old.

So formating the old hard drive is possible when i run the win7 DVD?
 

k-l-e

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Looks like it was a bad ram module. I had 3 rams on the motherboard, 2x2x2. I took out the oldest one that didnt have any corresponding twin. Now I could install win7 without problems and without errors. Nothing has gone wrong until now.

Im not sure wether i should reconnect the hard drive that didnt want to boot at all due to the blue screens. Its a better hard drive than what i use now tho.
 

muz_j

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Excellent to hear that you solved your problem.
Memory issues are classic causes for Blue Screens too.

As for testing your hard drive.....it shouldn't be an issue to test it. about the worst possible case scenario would be file system corruption if the machine's locking up in the middle of the boot process, but that's not very likely.