General coding question

[Pragma]

mike wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Don't really know where to post this, hope it's ok to post it here ...
> 
> Does anybody know how it's possible that I suddenly run into random 
> BAD_POOL_CALLER blue screens with my project? Google doesn't really 
> help, since every advice is: check your RAM, check your hard drive, 
> reinstall windows ... but I haven't found anything related to what 
> mistakes in coding lead to that.
> 
> Particularly when exiting my program I've had some blue screens, 
> sometimes at the precise moment I hit the ESC key. Sometimes it happens 
> when I'm only looking at the screen the wrong way. It's a bit 
> frustrating to track that down, too, since I can't reproduce it at all 
> and there seems to be no real pattern when it appears, other than that 
> it happens since maybe a week ago and seems to be happening more often 
> when exiting the program. The only things that are new in my program is 
> that I load Winmm.dll to do some stuff and that my SDL GUI code is more 
> complex now than it was before.
> 
> Any advice would be very much appreciated.
> 
> -Mike
> 
> --Erstellt mit Operas revolutionärem E-Mail-Modul: 
> http://www.opera.com/mail/

::dusts off tech support hat::

FWIW, I have some experience getting a BSOD in conjunction with bad 
video drivers and/or bad video cards.

So the obvious stuff to check for:
- was there *any* system change that correlates with when the fault 
first happened?
- do you have surge and/or brownout protection?
- video drivers up to date?
- direct-X up to date?
- are there critical updates pending, or was anything pushed by MS when 
things started to go wrong?

... I'm sure there are other things, but I think you get the idea. :)

Anyway, if you don't want to completely tear down and rebuild your 
machine to root this out, then I'd recommend trying a different video 
card (cheap ones can be bought for next to nothing online these days - 
just make sure it's on the HCL first!).  As the most essential, yet 
replaceable part in the system, it's an obvious first place to look.  At 
the very least it can at least narrow things down without too much work.

Another option is to use a linux live CD for a few days and see if you 
get any nasty kernel panics or other similar problems on that side.

//I miss the good ol' days when fiddling with jumpers did the job
//yea, I know - get off my lawn

-- 
- EricAnderton at yahoo