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BSOD running Plex Media Server, now NIC not working and locking up
OK, I've been doing a fresh install of Windows 7 x64 and had almost finished installing all the software, when I found it would BSOD whenever I tried to run Plex Media Server, which scans certain folders to build a media database. Running defrag didn't cause any problems, so it didn't seem to be an issue with accessing the disk as such.
I posted the dump from that BSOD at the Plex forum and someone looked at it for me and advised:
This is the 063013-36535-01.dmp in the attached zip.Code:This is memory corruption in kernel mode. Nothing to do with Plex. DRIVER_CORRUPTED_EXPOOL (c5) An attempt was made to access a pageable (or completely invalid) address at an interrupt request level (IRQL) that is too high. This is caused by drivers that have corrupted the system pool. Run the driver verifier against any new (or suspect) drivers, and if that doesn't turn up the culprit, then use gflags to enable special pool.The crash appears to be a null dereference, which suggest a software bug rather than bad memory. But I'd suggest running memtest anyway. FAULTING_IP: nt!ExDeferredFreePool+249 fffff800`033c2b05 4c395808 cmp qword ptr [rax+8],r11 CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 1 DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: WIN7_DRIVER_FAULT PROCESS_NAME: System TRAP_FRAME: fffff880031857d0 -- (.trap 0xfffff880031857d0) NOTE: The trap frame does not contain all registers. Some register values may be zeroed or incorrect. rax=0000000000000000 rbx=0000000000000000 rcx=fffff8000341da50 rdx=fffff88009841450 rsi=0000000000000000 rdi=0000000000000000 rip=fffff800033c2b05 rsp=fffff88003185960 rbp=0000000000000000 r8=0000000000000000 r9=fffff88009841c90 r10=0000000000000001 r11=fffff88009841ca0 r12=0000000000000000 r13=0000000000000000 r14=0000000000000000 r15=0000000000000000 iopl=0 nv up ei ng nz ac po cy nt!ExDeferredFreePool+0x249: fffff800`033c2b05 4c395808 cmp qword ptr [rax+8],r11 ds:00000000`00000008=???????????????? Unfortunately, these tend to be fairly hard to track back to a specific driver. You can use the driver verifier to pinpoint the issue further (at the risk of exposing new issues). My general suggestion is to revert to inbox or WU drivers, as those tend to be more tested/stable.
Since then, I disabled a BIOS option "SATA IDE Combined Mode". I have no idea what it's for but after disabling it, I didn't get any more BSOD when running Plex, although it did crash.
Everything was looking up until last night, when the onboard NIC stopped working. It still showed as OK in Device Manager but just insisted that the "Network Cable Disconnected". I first had the same problem a few months ago when I plugged in a CF Card IDE adapter. I have no idea why plugging something into the IDE port would affect the NIC but it did and started working again as soon as I disconnected the adapter.
Yesterday, I'd connected up an IDE HDD and ODD (actually I only had power to the ODD) but the NIC didn't stop working until several hours later. I disconnected the IDE cable from the motherboard but this time it didn't get the NIC working again.
This morning I ran a LAN test from the BIOS which confirmed the cable was fine. I also disabled the "Aggressive Link Power Management" option in the BIOS in case that was causing the NIC problem. Then I booted into a Win 7 x86 VHD I use for diagnostic purposes. After installing the NIC driver, which I had stored on the HDD "AR813x_AR815x_v2.1.0.14_WHQL (Ethernet)", it worked fine in that. So I rebooted into my normal Win7 x64 install but it seems to have got worse overnight, whilst the PC was off! Now, although the mouse pointer still moves, I can't click on anything, such as Start or the notification tray, which I normally can and the system is basically frozen. On my second boot, the whole thing, including the mouse pointer froze up.
So I rebooted into safe-mode from where I'm typing this, obviously with a working NIC. I'm really hoping it's a driver/software thing that can be fixed as I've put a lot of time into setting up this system for my brother and it's getting hard these days to find another board that has the required onboard VGA/DVI, adequate PCI slots, IDE connector, etc.