XP SP3 Crashes Some AMD Machines

Raven 05-12-2008

Last night WSUS deployed XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) to the sole remaining computer running XP that I have. This morning, I came down and was greeted with incessant reboots. The computer booted, apologized for not being able to boot properly, asked if I wanted to boot into safe mode, defaulted to normal boot, rebooted, and so on and so on. At this point, I want to clarify that the endless rebooting is not at all related to SP3 per se. The problem is that with some configurations, SP3 causes the computer to crash during boot, and Windows XP, by default, is set up to automatically reboot when it crashes. That is why you end up in the endless rebooting scenario.

There are many possible reasons why a computer may crash at boot time. SP3 seems to introduce two that are related to AMD-based computers, and, possibly, one or two more that appear to affect Intel-based computers. Which one it is impacts which work-around you use. At this point, the information is still trickling in. If you have a crash on boot problem that does not match what I describe below, and it happened as soon as you installed SP3, I'm sure others would like to know as well, including as much detail as you can give us.

First problem, affecting AMD-based computers with OEM images

In my case, the computer would boot into safe mode fine, so I did that. Not knowing what it was, I ran a disk check, which turned out to be a real mistake. Once I configured the computer to run a disk check at startup it would not even boot into safe mode.

Fortunately, I know Bill Castner, another Microsoft MVP, and he pointed me to a solution. It turns out that this computer is running an OEM OS image from HP. If you have an HP computer with a part number that ends with a 'z' you have an AMD-based computer. Other manufacturers have also shipped AMD-based computers, but it is unclear whether they have built their images the same way HP did.

The problem is that HP, and possibly other OEMs, deploy the same image to Intel-based desktops that they do to AMD-based desktops. It also appears that this is unique to their desktop image, and any HP AMD-based laptops are unaffected by the problem. Because the image for both Intel and AMD is the same all have the intelppm.sys driver installed and running. That driver provides power management on Intel-based computers. On an AMD-based computer, amdk8.sys provides the same functionality. Microsoft points out in a Knowledge Base article that installing both drivers on the same computer is an unsupported configuration, putting the blame on the OEM that deploys the image. The article in question was written when the same problem occurred after installing Service Pack 2 for Windows XP.

Ordinarily, having intelppm.sys running on an AMD-based computer appears to cause no problems. However, on the first reboot after a service pack installation, it causes a big problem. The computer either fails to boot, as in my case, or crashes with a STOP error code of 0x0000007e. If you see that error code you almost certainly have this problem. The computer will boot into safe mode because the drivers are disabled there. Please note here that simply having the intelppm.sys file on your computer is not the problem so searching for it in the Windows directory is not relevant. It must be running to cause a problem.

You may not see the error code because the computer reboots too fast. To force the computer to stop when it crashes, you need to set an option during startup. To do so, hit the F8 key during restart right when you see the black Windows XP screen come up. Then select the "Disable automatic restart on system failure" option.

Nina

Hmmm Hsool and Gir weere just talking about having internet connections problems but damn that's serious. Isnt that what happen the SP2 was released too, computers not booting up?

Hsoolien

I'm seeing random crashing too, i don't remember these issues with SP2, in fact it was the sheer stability that SP2 brought to XP that made me finally switch from 98

GIR

And the fact i gave you a copy of my MSDN XP copy, does help also.
with that it might be considered a OEM, mine is since it came with the computer.

Hsoolien

I thought I had XP before that, but ehrn I think back.

I'm not worried about the OEM aspect as I used a normal XP Pro disk for install, I think they mean OEM images kept of the XP CD on the HD, so the OEM companies don't have to ship the disk

Dream

I remeber the xp2 problems, it took me so long before I updated to it but turned ou I didn't have any problems when I did so that's all good.

GIR

So you had XP before i gave you xp? then why did i gave you my MSDN version?
is that something like what came first the chiken or the egg...

Raven

Ok damn Hsool, you alredy just got Gir head going in circles now.

Hsoolien

he has strong logic, and I'm pretty sure he's right, it was my dad who had XP before and had problems.