got an XP machine in which won't boot in normal or safe mode. instead it BSODs with stop code 0x0000008e (0xC0000005) and mentions win32k.sys as the faulting driver
according to MS this code normally points to bad RAM, especially if it happens during startup.
my gut feeling was that the hardware was fine, there had been no previous problems with the machine, and i could boot into a PE environment just fine (UBCD4WIN if you must know) and run the machine for hours with no problems. its a dell machine and the bios offers no hardware tweaks, so i cant reduce any clock speeds or disable anything in that respect. i've also swapped the RAM sticks in and out, including swapping them for some "known good" sticks i've got lying around. no change there (doesn't rule out the RAM controller or other motherboard faults, i know)
i tried disabling a few services in the recovery console but no joy there so far, so just to make sure on the hardware front i ran memtest86 and after 24 hours it's showing no problems
so then i tried a repair installation of XP, it completes the first step just fine, then after the first reboot we get the same BSOD, this time mentioning ialmnt5.sys as well as win32k.sys
so back into recovery console, the closest thing i can disable is "ialm" so i've done that. still the same. so i renamed the ialmnt5.sys file to ialmnt5.old to prevent it from loading, and still BSOD, only now it's back to only listing win32k.sys as the culprit
short of disabling everything that isn't flagged as "system" in the recovery console, i'm out of ideas. i've run chkdsk /r which didnt find any baddies, the CPU is warming to around 40 degrees and there's good airflow in the case.
any other suggestions ?
Start Free Trial
