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It turns out that SATA connected devices do share this problem. There is not a terminating resistor required external to the device, but poor connections do result in a system just waiting without throwing any errors. I recently diagnosed a system where it was just slower than tar, and yet it’s twin was super fast.

SATA cables can and do go bad! This is what happened to me during the Vista era: http://davidcmoisan.wordpress.com/2007/08/02/vista-finally-stable-for-me-no-thanks-to-a-cable/

If you don’t block USB/removable/CDRW at the office, it won’t matter what remote access they have.

Let’s start with the users:

Do they use line-of-business or other specialized applications? That could stop you right there. Linux users might say, use WINE, but there is not a vendor of a Windows-based application who could or would support it. You could lie to tech support and a lot of us have, usually to get around a vendor’s preconceived diagnosis of your problem (like, vendor says the app won’t run on blue-cased laptops) but you will be fighting this.

As another poster put it, how much Office do they use? How much Office (documents) do they share? Office is not just Word or Excel, as you know. Visio, which I use extensively, has no comparable open-source counterpart.

Media is a sore point. Outside of somewhere like a call center that is heavily regimented, your users will play Flash content and mp3s and video. I like VLC very much, for example, but its codec support is defintely done “under the table” due to legal concerns. The multimedia stack in Linux in general has been a source of problems and you will not have the time to fix it if it breaks more than once.

Lastly, this is a sensitive point for me. I have low vision. I am familar with Ubuntu and the various distros and I have noticed one point the Linux community is especially weak on, and that is the support for accessibility features for people with disabilities. Ubuntu has some support; a screen magnifier and a screen reader donated by Sun (what will happen to it now is unknown) but it is much less mature than the equivalent third-party products on Windows; the magnifier in Ubuntu isn’t even as good as the new magnifier in Windows 7.

If you have a user that has a screen reader or a magnifier and you can’t get something like that usable for them in Linux, that is a stopper. That is a stopper.

(I’m not optimistic that the Linux community will resolve the last point. I remember too well what ESR (The Cathedral and the Bazaar) said in his blog once in respoinse to a blind user: “There are many more people who aren’t blind and disabled and we need to take care of them first.” I’ve used Linux off and on for specialized tasks over the years, but if I had my way I never would use it again–I felt that offended.)

If you must try it, get a volunteer. Try to replicate their software stack–everything they use–as best as possible. Replicate their wallpaper Replicate their MP3 collection. Sit with them for a day. Do normal troubleshooting.

You’ll know very quickly if this is going to work or not.

Have you tried the hotfix suggested earlier? I’d gladly explain how to configure WinDbg but this is getting really deep for a regular user, especially when there are some other leads we can pursue.

There is another hotfix available for the AHCI Problem. Try that with the other hotfix, or just install Service Pack 1 RC. In fact, if you can run the computer long enough to install the service pack, why not try it?

Hello David,

Thanks for your help.

Regarding your comment ” If you are running your C: disk in AHCI mode you may need to switch it to IDE”, please excuse my lack of computer expertise but how do I find out what mode I am running my C:disk in, and if it is in AHCI mode how do I switch it to IDE?

First, try the Windows 7 hotfix that another poster has suggested. It’s possible that may be the more likely cause.

If your crashes persist, change the disk mode by restarting the computer and hitting a key–usually DEL, but sometimes F2 or F10–to enter the bios. There may be a menu item named “Peripherals” or “Advanced Peripheral Settings”. If you have a SATA drive (thin cable; older IDE cables are ribbons), there’ll be something named “Disk Controller 0 Mode” which will have a choice of IDE, AHCI [or possibly, RAID]. If it is set to AHCI, try setting it to IDE (if it is set to IDE or RAID, leave it alone). This is as specific as I can get; many BIOSes have this setting but there is no standardization whatsoever with the user interface. There will be a key to save and exit setup; do so, and restart.

Hello Gerald,

The BSOD did appear when booting Windows 7.

I ran the sfc /scannow command and chkdsk /r in Safe Mode. No file integrity violations were found by sfc /scannow. With regard to chkdsk /r 0 bad files were processed, 2 EA records were processed, and 44 reparse records. (What are EA records and reparse records?). Apart from this I noticed the number of files referred to in Stages 1 and 3 of chkdsk is always 16 more than the number referred to in Stage 4. Why is this?

Unfortunately I was called away from my computer and when I returned chkdsk had completed and the computer had restarted normally. Is there any way I can retrieve whatever information may have been given at the end of the process?

Is there any way to copy the ntoskrnl.exe file from my Win 7 installation DVD and replace the file on my system with that copy?

I have not yet had a chance to try any of the other things you mentioned but will do so shortly. Meanwhile I would appreciate your reply to the foregoing.

Thanks and regards,
Roy

DO NOT try to copy the ntoskrnl file from your installation DVD. It won’t help. In earlier versions of Windows, ntoskrnl.exe could actually be one of several different versions depending on the system it is run on and copying the wrong kernel would leave you dead in the water.

Generally, even if Windows reports that the cause of a bluescreen is at some specific file, it could well be caused by a problem somewhere else. It usually is.

I am certain that nothing is wrong with the kernel as long as SFC reports no errors.

You’ve ruled out disk corruption with your chkdsk. EA records and reparse records are a normal part of NTFS. Nothing is wrong with your disk structure.

I’ll reiterate what I said before: Check the drivers and the SATA cable. If you are running your C: disk in AHCI mode you may need to switch it to IDE to work around a bug in Windows.

OK, I looked it up–I am certified in Windows Internals. The error is caused by a failure at some point during Windows startup, after the boot but before the logon screen. Here is the help text from Windows Debugger:

Bug Check 0x6B: PROCESS1_INITIALIZATION_FAILED
The PROCESS1_INITIALIZATION_FAILED bug check has a value of 0x0000006B. This bug check indicates that the initialization of the Microsoft Windows operating system failed.

Parameters
The following parameters appear on the blue screen.

Parameter Description
1 The NT status code that caused the failure
2 Reserved
3 Reserved
4 Reserved

Cause
Any part of the disk subsystem can cause the PROCESS1_INITIALIZATION_FAILED bug check, including bad disks, bad or incorrect cables, mixing different ATA-type devices on the same chain, or drives that are not available becuase of hardware regeneration.

This bug check can also be caused by a missing file from the boot partition or by a driver file that a user accidentally disabled in the Drivers tab.

In the event log entry you gave, there doesn’t seem to be a parameter 1–all the bug check parameters are zero.

I would look very closely at the disk, the cable, the drivers and the BIOS. There is a known problem with Windows 7 and its ACPI driver; if it occurs during startup it could cause this error. I have been fighting with my ACPI drive to not bluescreen on wakeup so I can sympathize.

Is there UPS management software on the affected server? Some UPS software is quick to shutdown the computer on the slightest power glitch.

You ought to start looking at Scripting with Windows PowerShell. There is a LOT of information there.

Joe

I have PowerShell 2.0 Administrator’s Companion. This is a fine small reference. Also: PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices.

Also don’t forget to flush the DNS cache. From a command prompt:

ipconfig /flushdns

You will use the ipconfig commands most often in troubleshooting, particularly ipconfig /all. I don’t use netsh unless something is very messed up.

I would not worry about the Netgear disc. It’s mainly an assistant to configure older versions of Windows. If you didn’t make networking changes before the reinstall, it will likely be OK.

I want to clear up a misconception: In SBS 2008 Premium, the 2nd server does not have to be 64-bit; it can be 32-bit. At SATV we have a Dell PE1900 with 8G running SBS itself while our former SBS machine, an older Dell PE1800, runs Server 2008 32-bit. This older Dell server works very well with Server 2008; in fact, it has given that machine another life.

According to Wikipedia, “GIMPshop is a modification of the free and open source graphics program GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), intended to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop.”

I’m generally not a fan of programs like that. GIMP on the inside is so different from Photoshop that you will notice. If you’re not used to Photoshop, it’s a complete hash.

I’d get into all the faults of GIMP and how it doesn’t really fit well into Windows but that’s another thread.

I have and use the GIMP, Photoshop Elements, and Paint.net. The one I use the most by far is Paint.net.

Nothing wrong with Elements, but for the day-to-day image manipulations I do, Paint.net is the most straightforward.

If you annotate your images–for example, showing a picture of a motherboard and circling the CPU cooler–Paint.net does this more easily than the other two. I have used the GIMP for annotation and it isn’t so good. (In fact, I mostly keep the GIMP around just because I have so many old files in that format.) Paint.net has line tools and arrows–very important for that use.

Cropping is a two step process in Paint.net. It also does level control and has a selection of common filters. Another thing you often do when annotating screenshots is to redact certain information from the image that you don’t want to show the world, like user names, private IP addresses, etc. Select and Gaussian Blur (most any paint program has this) works nicely.

I’m an experienced user who would be smart enough to use full Photoshop if he could afford it. But when you are blogging, you want to do your graphics quickly and Paint.net does that very well.

Get the Sysinternals tools from Microsoft. Run Process Explorer–that will tell you where your CPU is going. Process Monitor will show file and registry accesses.