Special pool used to be quite a useful debugging aid in the times of Windows NT 3.x-4.x and early days of Win2K. The idea behind it was very simple: to tag each allocated memory block by an identifier so that if a crash occurs, the system may be able to identify who’s block it (roughly) is (normally, memory blocks are anonymous).
With the arrival of Win2K, and mainly XP, MS actually gave us a much more powerful weapon to fight device driver failures - the Driver Verifier. To run this tool, type
verifier
to the Run box, and follow the on-screen instructions. While this tool is mainly aimed to developers it can also provide some help to the rest of the world.
Be warned, though – whenever the Driver Verifier finds something suspicious, it invokes a blue screen! Really. :
The bottom line is, don’t do this unless you know what you’re doing.
(so do I understand it correctly that your new hardware has not yet arrived… :o)
Just thought I’d pop back and say thanks once again fellas
You’ve managed to do what Pavel has been trying to do for weeks… keep me off the forums for a few days… (while I digest all this info) <still joking Pavel :)> .
Which great Antartic explorer said… “I might be gone for some time”
Finally ploughed through it all and surprisingly understood most of it in the end… I think the alcohol helped 8) .
I can also confirm your ‘warning’ Vlk. I couldn’t resist trying it and I didn’t have to wait for a blue screen… it repeatedly ‘booted’ into one. By this time I was fed up and drunk and couldn’t be bothered to find out what a wps??nt driver was. :-[
Just as a passing comment 8) … what does ashMon2.sys do. Verifier didn’t seem to like that and when microsoft got hold of the mini-d the reply was… “This error is currently being researched”. Obviously I don’t think they have picked up loads of avast errors and it’s just a general reply, but wondering what the file does?.