BSOD Stop 0x00000116 in nvlddmkm.sys

Upon returning from TechEd, I went to power up my trusty old workstation (an aging Intel D865PERL-based machine), however it didn’t start up at all. After double-checking that it was actually plugged in properly I suspected that the power supply may be the culprit.

I’d had a similar problem with the kid’s PC a while back. I’d bought a new replacement SHAW PSU and it worked for a time, but had subsequently started freezing for no reason, so it had been put aside.

I took the new PSU out of that PC and dropped it into my workstation. Turning on the power got an immediate response – fans whirring and all the right sounds coming from the machine. Everything looked good until the after the “Starting Windows” screen disappeared. After a long pause I was greeted by nasty BSOD:

STOP 0x00000116 (0x876c5008, 0x90835640, 0x00000000, 0x00000002)

nvlddmkm.sys

I could boot the system in Safe mode, but as soon as I allowed it to reboot normally it would BSOD again. Windows 7 Action Center tries to be helpful and suggest I go to the NVidia website to download a new driver that fixes the problem. A nice idea except that the GeForce FX-based graphics card that this machine uses was last supported by driver version 96.85 from 17th October 2006 (which I was already using).

Researching this error I came across this thread. I tried the suggestion of adding the TdrLevel DWORD value to the registry but unfortunately the BSOD remained.

So the problem is somehow related to the graphics driver. Quite bizarre as I’ve never had problems like this before. The only thing that changed was the PSU. This made me suspect that maybe the new PSU was also problematic. That might well explain why the kid’s PC also froze for no reason too.

So what to do? Buy another (better quality?) PSU in the hope that it will resolve the BSOD, or go the full hog and upgrade this circa 2003 system with something a little more modern.

TechEd 'Celebrity' Head

• I enjoyed hanging out at various times with Narelle, Rob Farley, Ben McNamara, Darren Gosbell, Grant Paisley, Geoff Orr and Glyn Llewellyn
• Worked and chatted with Bill Chesnut, George Doubinski and the other Technical Learning Guides
• Saw Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell
• Said hello to Michael Kordahi and Richard Banks
• Bumped into Dave Glover, Andrew Coates, Adam Cogan
• Was kindly assisted by Mitch Denny, Anthony Borton
• Chatted online to Roger Noble
• Caught up with Geoff and Glyn again at the airport on our way home

I know I’ve missed someone… I’ll update this page when my memory recovers

TechEd Friday

Back helping out in the Hands on Labs again this morning. A long shift from 8.15am – 1pm.

Somehow I missed getting to DEV424 – “High performance, highly scalable applications on the .NET Framework”, but instead I went to VOC208 – “Tech•Ed backstage 2010!”. It was interesting to hear the hurdles that were leapt to roll out the networking infrastructure (particularly wireless access and IPv6) at the conference this year.

At lunchtime I managed to see Carl and Richard and their “64-bit question” swag giveaway. Nice to see the guys in person, and put faces to the voices from the podcasts.

Regarding IPv6… Apparently it wasn’t particularly easy to roll out, and there’s not much on the Internet yet that works with it (eg. not even Windows Update), but on the other hand, they reckon IPv4 addresses are almost all exhausted, so the need for IPv6 to become more widely available is growing.

Good to see Rob made the highlight reel at the closing session! The “locknote” was presented by Miha Kralj. It was another use of fast-paced PowerPoint slides, but again done very effectively. Very thought-provoking.