BSOD 0x000000F4 after SSD migration

jceipek said:

Background:
After having two HD failures with my (new as of the end of the summer) Dell Latitude E6410 over the course of several months, I decided to get an SSD. The data from this drive is backed up, but I had many large applications installed that I will need to use in about two weeks (which is also the first time that I will have access to the license keys and install disks/files for these applications). Consequently, I am attempting to clone the install from my most recent HD, which has several bad sectors.

Problem Description:
After cloning and fixing the Win7 partition from my old drive, recreating the MBR, and fixing dozens of BSODs, I am now stuck with Stop: 0x000000F4, "a process or thread crucial to the system has been unexpectedly exited or terminated." The cause of this error is not being written to the minidump folder or the memory.dmp file as far as I can tell (I backed up the contents, deleted them, and then tried every F8 boot option available with no output). This BSOD occurs after Classpnp.sys has loaded, which is the last driver loaded by the test system I have installed on an additional partition on the same drive (which boots just fine). chkdsk /f /b is now able to complete with no errors other than "unable to write log file [...] status 50" and sfc /scannow indicates no corruption in system files. Startup repair is useless -- when it is first run, it completes successfully with no errors, and when it is run again after a BSOD, it indicates volume corruption as its root cause for failure. I want to do a repair install, but that is apparently only possible in Win7 if I can get the OS to boot (which seems very strange, by the way), and I cannot even boot into safemode.

Process Summary:
If you need more detail, please tell me.
I cloned the Win7 partition using ntfsclone --rescue when there were at least 2 bad sectors; by the time it completed, there were 10. I fixed the partition table on the SSD (which is smaller but has more than enough room for the old Win7 partition). I tried unsuccessfully to fix the mbr with the command line (no OSes were found even though startup repair was able to detect the cloned partition as a Win7 install), so I installed a fresh copy of Win7 in a new partition on the same disk (volume C:) and used EasyBCD to add the cloned install (residing on volume D:) to the Longhorn bootloader. avg*.sys files caused BSODs, so I renamed them with a prefix (they are part of AVG antivirus software, and are technically unneeded to boot the system). Next, I got a BSOD indicating that the disk could not be mounted. I got around this by copying over fvevol.sys, Classpnp.sys, and disk.sys from C: to D: (I made backups of the old files just in case). I used BlueScreenView on my minidump log, and an error with ntoskrnl.exe was detected. I backed it up and replaced it with the one from the C: system. I backed up and deleted the minidump folder. I used the program on the Memory.dmp file, and it indicated no root causes. The file was over 300MB, so I backed it up, deleted it, and tried every F8 boot mode for the cloned OS. The minidump folder was not recreated, and neither was Memory.dmp. I am now stuck with the useless 0x000000F4 message, and I can find no helpful information about this that applies to my case. I have no afs.sys file, for example, so I cannot disable it.

I have now spent over 50 hours on this process and would prefer to get advice other than "format your disk and copy your data over" if possible. I am more familiar with *nix systems than Windows, so any help would be sincerely appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Julian Ceipek

P.S.
In case it matters, the system in C: is not yet activated or updated (I left my license key in my dorm room, so I won't be able to access it for two weeks, and I have not yet transferred drivers for Wifi or Ethernet to the computer -- the default drivers do not work for the network card on the machine). Could the mix of old and new or activated and unactivated system .sys files cause a problem? If so, why does sfc /scannow indicate that the files are fine?

All of my hardware is running perfectly as far as I can tell - I ran an in-depth diagnostic using the system tools that came with the machine, the new install is working fine, and I was still able to use Ubuntu after Windows stopped working on the HD with bad sectors. The Windows 7 install disk I am using is for Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

I read the guide for BSOD posts and performed the specified steps using the documents folder in D: running from the clean system. I don't know how this application works, so it is possible that the results are entirely useless and apply only to the currently booted system, which is not the one that has problems. Attachment 128609

Julian hi and welcome

The application didnt include a DMP file for some reason. Can you try this method?


If you wish to have others assist you with your computer's BSOD symptoms, upload the contents of your "\Windows\Minidump" folder. The procedure:

* Copy the contents of \Windows\Minidump to another (temporary) location somewhere on your machine.
* Zip up the copy.
* Attach the ZIP archive to your post using the "paperclip" (file attachments) button.
* Briefly describe the problem history and circumstances in the same post. Somebody will attend to your query as soon as possible.

Julian, follow the instructions in this turotial and lets see what the files come up with. https://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-d...tructions.html

Thanks, CarlTR6, but I already followed those instructions:

I read the guide for BSOD posts and performed the specified steps using the documents folder in D: running from the clean system. I don't know how this application works, so it is possible that the results are entirely useless and apply only to the currently booted system, which is not the one that has problems. Attachment 128609

I'm sorry that my initial post was so long, but I needed to explain all of the possible sources of error involved in migrating my partition from the HD to the SSD.

Just for the sake of it,
Windows 7 Is ...
- x64
- the original installed OS on the system, but not the same version
- an OEM version I got from Newegg

- Age of system (hardware): A few months
- Age of OS installation: {{A few months} - {2 to 3 weeks}} (when the original HD failed and I replaced it with a larger capacity disk and gave the system 8GB of RAM). The clone on volume D: was created and tested over the past few days. The clean install on C: was created a few hours later.

I ran SpinRite on the original disk for over 12 hours, and even though it only got through 0.0474% of the disk, it moved the data in 3 of the 10 bad sectors into empty sectors. I cloned the partition again (ntfsclone --rescue /dev/sd<SRC> -O /dev/sd<DEST>) and used the install cd to fix startup options. The system booted, installed drivers for the SSD, restarted, and ran chkdsk on its own, fixing and deleting many files. I cleared the bad clusters file using chkdsk /f /b, and the system booted up. :)

I tried to run EasyBCD to remove the old windows install from the bootloader in preparation for resizing the partition to fill the disk with GParted, but it couldn't run - some of the .NET frameworks are missing (I recall seeing a file with .NET in its name in the list of files that chkdsk deleted when it ran on startup). I want to do a repair install, but when I powered off the machine, I accidentally pressed the "shut down and update botton." The machine is now frozen on the screen "Installing update 2 of 7 ..". I can't do anything else but forcibly power off the machine and run chkdsk again. I will post again when I make progress.

I resized the NTFS partition, performed a repair install, and reconfigured my touchpad drivers. Everything is working much faster than before.