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I am receiving a BSOD regarding cng.sys as well as seemingly random freezes. I am having a difficult time pinpointing the issue as the BSODs occur while the PC is not in use.
I have run memtest but it freezes. I know this may point to a RAM issue, but please let me know what you see from the dumps. Also, if you have any alternative hardware diag suggestions, please advise.
Thanks all!
Interesting. Do you have any idea what this driver might be:
Image path: \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\angm6xs2.SYS
Timestamp: Sun Mar 22 01:48:32 2009 (49C4FE40)
I think you might have (at least) two separate issues. One is some type of kernel-mode security detonation, and the other looks like garden variety RAM unreliability.
Thanks for the quick response. No idea on what that driver is. In fact, I don't even see that driver in the 'Image Path' location (see attached pic). I can tell you that I have updated the latest nforce and geforce drivers from nvidia and the problem still exists.
I believe you. Even Google doesn't know what that driver is, and yet there are some indications in the minidumps that it's somehow plugged itself into the security/authentication mechanism - which happens to be crashing on your machine.
See, now that's very suspicious because the driver is there, and yet it's not showing up in a directory listing. The combination of a seemingly random driver name (generated on the fly), its stealthed presence (something is hiding that driver from an Explorer directory listing), and the fact that your machine regularly BSODs with some strange security-related crashes, all of that points to a probable malware infestation.
I'd suggest running some in-depth malware scans.
Roger that. I finally got Memtest-86 v3.5 to run for more than 2 minutes by removing 2 of 3 ram sticks. I will make sure that it passes a few times before performing malware eradication. I have adaware and avast installed already. I am thinking of trying a few command line scanners (mcafee, trend micro, and webroot) as well as any other programs that will work (kaspersky, panda, a-squared, and ewido). Anything in particular I should stay away from? I haven't had much experience cleaning a win7 system.
When I saw the screenshot of the file missing before, I thought malware immediately.
Scan with Malwarebytes on full scan mode. It's fairly comprehensive, especially with latest definition updates.
Thanks for both of your help. I have not had a bsod or freeze since I removed the malware. I also removed 1 ram stick (slot 1 of bay 0) and passed memtest 7x in 10 hrs. Is it possible that my ram configuration was causing issue?
I had a stick in 3 of 4 slots. Bay 0, slots 0 & 1 & bay 1 slot 1. I also decided to upgrade the bios (update came out like yesterday!)
Anyway, another success story so far. Thanks for your help.
Glad to hear things are looking up :)
The malware wasn't caused by the memory issues, and I'm relatively confident there were one or two crashes which looked more like unreliable memory than malware. Hence, I'd have to conclude that the machine had two superimposed problems. Hopefully the BIOS upgrade does the trick w.r.t. the memory.
Two days of constant use and no BSODs or freezing. This is the longest consecutive streak without a problem so far. Thanks guys.
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