Blue Screen Shutdown

[toucan94506]

I've been getting 2 blue screen shutdown events recently and they are:

PAGE FAULT IN NON PAGED AREA

BAD POD HEADER

Using Google and Mcafee community I finally figured out the problem is with Mcafee software.  I was getting a blue screen about every 3-4 hours (probably when the next automatic update was run for Mcafee).  I finally removed everything off of my computer except Windows and mcafee and realized it was mcafee.  I then removed Mcafee and have run the computer for 24 hours without a blue screen.

My comments and questions are:

comment:  no need for me to call the help line or to use the web help people.  They all say exactly the same thing:  uninstall/reinstall mcafee or they change all the settings in windows trying to look like they know what they are doing.

question:  Is there a fix/update/workaround for this problem.

thanks in advance

I really look forward to someone resolving this issue

joe fischer

[Hayton]

mcupdmgr takes up a lot of memory when it runs.

How big is your page file,

how much RAM have you got installed,

what's your PC and operating system (and version),

which McAfee program have you got (Total Protection, Internet Security, something else)

Without at least a screen shot there isn't much information to go on. You've probably got an 0x50 Stop Code, which could be hardware. And the second message must be "Bad Pool Code", which is usually a driver problem.

See this Microsoft Answers article for some useful advice. Nirsoft's BlueScreen Viewer would help you here; I use it myself for bugchecks. You need to find the minidumps on your system, probably in c:\windows. Look for files with a .dmp suffix.

Message was edited by: Hayton on 24/08/12 01:09:06 IST

[toucan94506]

Sorry if some of this sounds jaded, but the 2 support groups that I rely on weren't much help solving this problem.  I first spend 10-15 hours with Mcafee telephone/online support people that led me around in circles for 3 days and ended up changing a lot of windows settings that should never have been changed.  I then took the computer to geek spuad and they had the computer for 10 days.  They said that they couldn't find any problems with hardware/software and thought that there might be a conflict between mcafee and windows or between mcafee and another application/driver.  Of course they don't support mcafee, so wouldn't help any further.  At my request, geek squad reformatted the drive and reloaded just windows and updated it to the most current update.  I started up windows defender antivirus/firewall and just windows systems/browser and that produced NO blue screen problems over 24 hours.  I then loaded the only program that i use on the computer and ran that with windows defender antivirus/firewall and NO blue screen problems over another 24 hours.

The only program left was mcafee.  Reading what was on the internet and what was on the mcafee community, it looked like the conflict was maybe with the mcafee automatic update program or maybe between mcafee and some driver.  I am now running mcafee with manual updates where it notifies me if there are updates.  The blue screen problems tend to happen every 3-4 hours and my single program only runs monday-friday, so i will let this run for another 24 hours.  If everything runs ok, i will then restart the mcafee automated backup and run for another 24 hours on monday 8/27.  If that produces a blue screen, then my work around is to run mcafee with automatic update off.  If all else fails, I will load another virus/firewall system.  I had a problem like this about 7 years ago with windows 2000 and mcafee on another computer and ended up using another virus system until I got this computer. 

To your questions:

I have 4 gig running on a dual processor from Dell and have been running the same single program and mcafee for the last 5 years.  My memory usage tends to run 30-40% and never runs more than 50% ever.  I currently use the following mcafee products:  security center version 11.0.678, virus scan version 15.0.302, personal firewall version 12.0.360 and site advisor version 3.3.1.133.  I downloaded mcaffee at 5pm on 8/23/12.  I'm not sure of the page file, but the geek squad assured me that it was big enough and not the problem.  My free disk space is huge.  The geek squad ran a battery of hardware/software diagnostics and found nothing.   I use windows vista and have windows automatic updating so I am totally current.

The bad pool header is stop 19 and the page fault in a non paged area is stop 50.  I tend to get 10 page fault in a non paged area to every bad pool header error.

You commented that mcupdmgr takes up a lot of memory when it runs.  I haven't noticed that, but don't watch closely given that I have 2+ gigs of free memory most of the time.  The one thing that has always bothered me is the large page swapping that goes on during a virus scan.  The one program that I use daily keeps almost everything in memory and so memory usage expands/contracts as needed and there is almost no page swaps.  The large page swapping for mcafee virus scan is very confusing to this old fashioned programmer who knows little about what goes on in desktop computers now a days.

OK, thats it for now, thanks for the advice.

toucan

Message was edited by: toucan94506 on 8/23/12 11:46:50 PM CDT

Message was edited by: toucan94506 on 8/23/12 11:48:45 PM CDT

[Peacekeeper]

and what is that 1 program you use?

[Bobcat]

Does your program transfer a lot of data?  Some of us have observed a nonpaged pool memory leak in McAfee since August 1st.  Start Task Manager, click the Performance tab, and monitor the nonpaged kernel memory value.  See if it continually increrases.

Message was edited by: Bobcat on 8/24/12 5:55:23 AM EDT

[toucan94506]

Peacekeeper....

I use tradestation software to trade currency and index futures.

toucan

[toucan94506]

Bobcat....

Tradestation streams trading data in from the internet, saves this data in memory and then writes the data to disk.  I always run with both task manager and the performance monitor up and have not noticed the nonpaged kernel memory value change much.  I will watch over the next few hours to see.

Thanks

toucan

[toucan94506]

To all.....

Setting the mcafee software to manual update has not produced any blue screens so far.  Will continue running this 24 hour cycle until 5pm today.  If all goes well, i will restart mcafee automated updating monday and run until i get a blue screen or for another 24 hours.

thanks again to all for the input

toucan

[Peacekeeper]

I will ask the techs if they have seen this when we talk Monday.

[Peacekeeper]

Any issues yet?