BAD_POOL_HEADER and PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGE_AREA errors
 

Win 7 Professional OS.

I am fairly confident there were updates downloaded and installed on Thursday (night) night but the Win7 update log shows nothing.

Regardless, yesterday (Fri) morn I powered up the 'puter, it seemed to boot, but then it crashed and I was greeted with the BSOD along with the error BAD_POOL_HEADER message. Googling for (helpful) information was inconclusive; it could be new hardware, new software, bad hardware or software, etc. Ultimately I was able to boot the 'puter and use it all day with no (visible) problems.

This morning was a repeat except this time the error was PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGE_AREA. Googling for information is again not very helpful; it could be this, that or another thing. Once again the 'puter will boot after the initial boot, crash, warning and re-boot.

I have not installed any new hardware or software. That said, a few days ago Win7 complained about one of the external drives I've had for months, but it seems fine now.

Please do not suggest running "ix"; I have more than one version of "ix" available to me but I have software that runs only on Windows, hence I remain with Win despite the all too frequent problems. If necessary, I will reinstall Win7 and assume/hope the problem is not hardware related.

Sounds RAM related to me. Run memtest for a cycle a see what it says. Could also be a bad motherboard.

I would suspect a hardware problem. Software-induced bluescreens are not as often these days as they used to be.

Here is the order I would troubleshoot this:
- Hard drive SMART status (is it failing?);
- Component temperatures (are all the fans running?);
- Power supply voltages and ripple (how old is it? Dry capacitors?);
- RAM test (thorough 12-hour or longer test with Memtest86+).

If a problem is not found, clean OS reinstall with most recent hardware drivers.

As always, your mileage may vary. :wavey:

My hearing is so poor that I asked my wife to listen. She says she can hear "a fan". I can see what I believe is a fan, through the back of the cabinet, but it does not seem to be spinning quickly. Nor is there a plethora of dust.

A couple of remembers: a few days of very frequent video driver failures/recovers. Then the "corrupt" external drive problem. Now the boot.crash.reboot and all seems to be fine.

I hate computers.

When that happens again, boot to your Win7 repair disk and go from there. See if Windows can automatically repair it.

You do have a repair disc, don't you? If not, Win 7 can create one for you.

Didn't it give you any additional errors or code numbers to look up?

I agree that this is probably hardware-related; I'd thoroughly test RAM & HD.

Yes, each crash resulted in error codes which correspond to the error text. The code was followed by a series of hEx-a-DeC numbers. This morning's crash was followed by several minutes of "collecting ... crash dump". I found the file but not surprisingly it is gibberish which must indicate a special tool is needed to decipher the content.

Windows MemTest indicates a hardware problem. MS SE indicates a hardware problem (volume error?) with a drive but not which drive. There are two internal (system, and data), two external, and an NAS.

I am wondering if it's the drive that was flagged as a problem is now an even more irritating problem. I have nowt to lose by disconnecting that drive and rebooting. If the system stays up it will seem to indicate that was the problem.

I am wondering if I unplug that drive if the error will go away.

Memtest does not report hardware problems other than faulty RAM. If you were getting errors running memtest, you have a bad stick of RAM (or possibly RAM slot, but that is rare).

Interesting that other onboard tools (computer manufacturer) indicate memory is fine.

What brand machine is it?

If memtest is indicating a problem, then it's bad ram. Start with taking out 1 stick of ram and see if it works without any issues. Keep on until the problem goes away. Don't complicate it.

Asus. I sent a message to them, describing the symptoms. Believe me, I don't want complications, and I agree that a process of elimination is a good idea.

Update
 

I disabled some startup stuff that I don't actually need, and checkdisked the system, data and flagged-as-error-in-past external disk.

Computer now boots with no problems.

Does your computer have an error log in the Bios? If so, check it out.

I had a similar issue with a PC a few years ago. If you have other RAM you can try, do so. It smacks of a RAM issue. That's what happened to me and I ended up having to try different combinations of DIMMs until I found the faulty one. It's a nasty fault because it can be intermittent, depending on how the module is damaged and what your RAM use is, at any given time...