Win2K is supposed to be BETTER ...

Factual Questions
1

I’m going to post this on a few likely newsgroups, but maybe somebody here has an idea or a suggestion for where else to post it:

I have a computer on which I have been running NT 4.0 (with various service packs, ending with 6a) for years without significant problems. For various reasons I replaced the Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller with an Adaptec 29160, replaced one hard disk (a Seagate 8 GB UW SCSI) with an IBM 18 GB LVD/UW SCSI drive, low-level formatted the new hard disk and the remaining old hard disk (Seagate 4 GB UW SCSI) and installed Windows 2000 Professional v5.0.2195 from scratch. I used the W2K setup to partition the IBM disk 12 GB / 6 GB and create a single partition on the 4 GB disk. The 12 GB partition is the boot partition, and was formatted NTFS by setup. I formatted the other two partitions as NTFS after Win2K was installed. I looked on the Windows 2000 site but didn’t see any service packs or hot fixes that seemed useful.

Before doing all this, I ran the Win2K Readiness Analyzer, and it came up with no problems.

I kind of like Win2K, but …

I have seen more BSOD’s in the last 24 hours than I have in two years with 4.0 (and I’m good at causing problems, and usually good at fixing them). I get a BSOD every two hours or so. Usually (maybe always) the BSOD says:

"STOP: 0x000000D1 (0x00000000, 0x0000001C, 0x00000000,0x00000000)
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete."

If that isn’t enough, the system freezes incredibly often. 15 minutes of continuous operation is a miracle. I can’t see any pattern. It freezes with apps running, with no apps running, while accessing the disk, while accessing the network, while being acessed over the network, or while just sitting there. It just freezes and won’t respond to anything but the reset or power-off buttons.

I can’t find any indication of anything wrong anywhere, except the dn thing crashes. What the hl should I do???

System specs, all using the drivers installed by Setup except where noted:

Asus C-P6ND card with two identical Pentium Pro 200 CPUs (stepping 7) and Award BIOS 4.51PG (the one available on the Asus web site is older) with Award P&P BIOS Extensions 1.0a, Asus P/I-P65UP5 baseboard.

128 MB RAM, swap file 310 MB on boot drive.

Adaptec 29160 UW - UW160/LVD SCSI controller in a 32 bit PCI slot (I have no 64 bit slots, but the manual says it works) with BIOS 2.57.0, Adaptec Win2K driver 1.0 (the latest; the problems occurred before I installed this driver).
IBM DMVS18V 18 GB on the LVD bus. A sweet drive!
Seagate ST34371W 4GB, HP C1533A SureStore 6000 DDS-2 DAT, Matsushita CW-7502 CD burner (with latest firmware) on the SE bus.

No-name 44X CD-ROM and NEC 251 4-disk CD-ROM changer on IDE from the mainboard.

NETGEAR FA310TX Fast Ethernet Adapter on PCI.

Creative Ensoniq SoundBlaster with Creative driver 5.12.1.2007 (the latest) on PCI.

3dfx Voodoo3 3000 with BIOS 1.00.01-SD on PCI. No 3dfx driver later than the one installed by Setup is available.

Microsoft Intellipoint PS/2 mouse with Intellipoint driver 3.20.0.484 (the latest).

USR Courier v.everything external modem on COM2, unused but detected by Win2K.

Brother MFC 4400 printer/fax/scanner on LPT1, using HP Laserjet IIP driver from Win2K.

No ISA cards. All IRQ’s assigned by P&P.

System tray programs (although this was happening before they were installed):
Norton Antivirus 2000 6.00.03.
Creative Mixer.

2

Our sys admin at work, a self-proclaimed “Linux chick”, says that Win 2000 is actually very stable. One of her machines at home runs with it, and it hasn’t crashed once and isn’t even as prone to the slow downs that force you to reboot every few days with NT. At work, we all use Linux or NT except the receptionist, who has Win 2000. Her machine does in fact blue screen every two hours or so. You might try reinstalling. That’s what our sys admin is trying. We’ll see if it works.

I’m going to hold off “upgrading” for awhile. Microsoft version one products don’t have a good track record.

3

At the risk of my cerebral pants falling down and exposing my ignorance, I have a thought to share. I have seen a very similar warning when one of my memory chips was not seated properly. Could this have happened while monkying around in there?

4

Possible, unlikely (it’s a tower case and I wasn’t monkeying near the memory much), and I’ll take a look. It’s worth a try.

Microsoft’s Knowledge base says it’s probably a driver, but the procedure they give for deteremining which driver relies on information that doesn’t appear on the BSOD. I’m trying changing the 29160 driver back to the one that came with Win2K to see what happens.

5

no problems at all with win2000, and ive installed it on several machines.

there is probably some kind of program or device conflict, check microsoft technet, it might help

6

Ok dude…you need to upgrade your BIOS, ACPI software, and any other drivers for your hardware that don’t seem to be functioning.

Other than that, you need to try looking the exact stop up on MS’s site, and it might be able to give you the driver that’s causing the error. You MUST check the vendor’s website for EXACT instructions to upgrade to Win2K, and also check the hardware with MS.

This is NOT Win2K, it’s your hardware and software configuration.

My IBM laptop did the same crap until I updated the ACPI software for it, it’s running like a top now.

-Sam

7

The main BIOS is a few years old, but the BIOS on the vendor’s web site is older. All the drivers and firmware are the latest available (except see below about the Win2K SCSI driver). I think the BIOS does not support ACPI (it’s a desktop).

I agree that my hardware is the proximate cause, but there’s some reason to believe that it should be handled better. The hardware is all functioning except the system crashes. The hardware all functioned under NT 4 (except for the SCSI controller). Yes, I know working under NT 4 does not guarantee working under Win2K, but it is an indication.

All the hardware is supported under Win2K. I checked all the suppliers’ web sites before upgrading. I ran Microsoft’s readiness analyzer and it came up with no problems. All the hardware is listed on Microsoft’s web site.

I found a document discussing that exact stop on Microsoft’s site. It’s usually a driver, but maybe not in this case (unless Microsoft is incorrect) because you’re supposed to be able to compare the address where the request came from with the base addresses of the drivers listed on the BSOD to determine which driver. The address where the request came from is 0x00000000 and there is no listing of base addresses of drivers on the BSOD. There are a couple of other unlikely possible causes that I have yet to look in to.

I solved a large part of the problem by replacing the SCSI controller driver that I got from Adaptec’s web site with the one that came with Win2K. It’s possible that Adaptec’s driver doesn’t handle some unusual situations well:

  1. It’s a 64 bit card in a 32 bit PCI slot. The specs say it works as long as the 32 bit slot is PCI 2.1 or better, which it is. But maybe they haven’t tested their Win2K driver with the card in a 32 bit slot.

  2. For various reasons, there is no SCSI ID 1 on the bus. ID 0 is the boot disk, ID 2 is the DAT drive, ID 3 is the CD burner, ID 4 is the hard drive, and ID 7 is the controller. The card sees all devices, but perhaps the lack of ID 1 does somtheing subtle.

It actually stayed up all night (doing nothing) and I used it for about a half-hour this mornign with no crashes. I have some reason to believe that it crashes now when I try to access its disks from a remote system over the network. More investigation …

8

What about your network drivers or your NIC card, then?

9

Looking at the NIC and network drivers is next. I’m installing SP1 as I type this (I’m on another computer), so messing around right now isn’t a good idea.

jrf

10

Jon, in my experience with Win2K, it was the ACPI/other advanced power system(my IBM lappy had anopther name for it’s less-advanced power-saver software), that caused ALL of the trouble.

Once I fiugured out a bit more, and went to IBM’s website, and downloaded the updated AP software, the thing was 110% stable!, Like a rock I tell you.

It won’t crash(well, once it did), 99.9% of programs operate on it, it runs SO much better than Win95/98 on my machine. I’m a true believer in Microsoft’s newest product. My only complaint is the use of RAM, and overuse of swap space.

I’ve heard horror stories about it being used as a webserver, but professional is definitely the best desktop product yet.

-Sam

11

Coming up on 40 hours of operation without a crash (three intentional reboots after installinh software and SP1). Dare I hope that it’s stable now?