Scott Hanselman

I hope this helps someone because it totally freaked me out this evening. I rebooted this evening, the first reboot since March, in fact, and blue-screened (BSOD) upon startup. At this point I was in a blue screen "loop" with the ominous message "INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR" on the blue screen. I started cussing Vista out and panicking, but this machine has been exceedingly stable since I built it last year and I reboot only every few months. I built it to be stable and I trust the machine.

Working backwards, the last and only interesting thing I installed was VMWare Player for Windows. I had some trepidation at the time of the install because I am not a fan of the way that VMWare adds virtual network devices that are listed in Network Connections, but it came highly recommended from respected power users I know and I needed it to install a prepared Suse VM from the Mono folks.

However, when it's installed my 64-bit machine blue screens, and it's very difficult to get uninstalled, actually. Needless to say this scared the crap out of me.

I looked all over and checked out the VMWare Forums and no one at VMWare has acknowleded the problem in a Googl-eable way. I can tell you this, however. I am using a Quad-proc machine with an MSI motherboard with the latest BIOs and a buttload of USB devices. The only way I could get the system to boot up was to remove ALL the USB devices. ALL of them, to be clear, save one wired USB Keyboard that I used to log in and remove VMWare.

My guts says that this is a bug in the VMWare USB bridging code (the stuff in VMWare that lets you use USB devices inside a VM) or it's somewhere in the USB drivers in Windows. I have the Crash Dumps if you work for VMWare and you're interested. I'll WinDBG them later this week.

I hope this post helps someone having this same issue.

UPDATE: Installed Windows Debugging Tools (WinDbg.exe) and analyzed the crash dump and it's the VMWare Keyboard Driver, of all things. Perhaps VMWare doesn't like my Wireless USB Keyboard? Mental note, relearn WinDbg'ing.

BugCheck A0, {101, 7, fffffa6001dc8b10, 0} 
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for VMkbd.sys
Page 9bda8 not present in the dump file. Type ".hh dbgerr004" for details
Probably caused by : VMkbd.sys ( VMkbd+15da ) 
Followup: MachineOwner
--------- 
1: kd> !analyze -v
*******************************************************************************
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
******************************************************************************* 
INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR (a0)
The power policy manager experienced a fatal error.
Arguments:
Arg1: 0000000000000101, Unhandled exception occured while processing a system power event.
Arg2: 0000000000000007
Arg3: fffffa6001dc8b10, ExceptionPointer.  To debug this, in the debugger type:
    'dt nt!_EXCEPTION_POINTERS <argument>'.  Then type:
    '.cxr <value of context record from the previous command>'.
    All subsequent debugger commands will show you the actual
    source of the error.  Start with a stack trace by typing 'kb'.
Arg4: 0000000000000000 
Debugging Details:
------------------ 
Page 9bda8 not present in the dump file. Type ".hh dbgerr004" for details 
BUGCHECK_STR:  0xA0 
DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT 
PROCESS_NAME:  System 
CURRENT_IRQL:  0 
EXCEPTION_RECORD:  fffffa6001dc99a8 -- (.exr 0xfffffa6001dc99a8)
ExceptionAddress: fffff80002477af1 (nt!IofCallDriver+0x0000000000000051)
   ExceptionCode: c0000005 (Access violation)
   ExceptionFlags: 00000000
NumberParameters: 2
   Parameter[0]: 0000000000000000
   Parameter[1]: 00000000000000e0
Attempt to read from address 00000000000000e0 
--------- 
Weird.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. I am a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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