Windows XP BSOD after installing WindowBlinds

Man, you messed up, didn't you?  Just kidding.  I only know this, SP3 is trash. It is the root of the problem. I had it and uninstalled it. It caused me all kinds of problems, but no BSOD.  Sorry not to be of more help. Someone who can help will be along shortly. Just keep checking.They will want you to tell them what version of Windowblinds you have, etc. If it is the 6.3 Version, this is the correct place to post, go here.

If you haven't done so already, please email [email protected] and start a trouble ticket.  They will be able to assist you.  Include a link to this post in your email to support.  They will be back to work tomorrow morning.

The version of WindowBlinds is whatever Impulse is downloading and installing. I guess it's 6.3? I also noticed a lot of people post the contents of the System Info tab. Unfortunately, since I can't start WindowBlinds right after installation (since it tells me the computer must be rebooted first), and a reboot causes the BSOD I'm seeing, I can't actually get to that tab and paste it's contents here.

I have emailed support about this and included a link to this thread.

did you turn off fw/antivirus when installing?

Let me guess it is acer desktop you have there?

Why have two GPU's and not running them in sli?

2.75 gigs of ram? in what configuration? what are they and in what slots?

As far as sp3 goes that should not be a problem. Red Neck I'd like to know more about your SP3 problems.

John please go to the run command and type in dxdiag then click ok. When it ask to check for WHQL drivers answer yes. Then when it finishes at the bottom there is a button which says -save all information- click that and save it as dxdiag.txt to your desktop.

Then if you would email that file to me I may be able to see what is your exact configurations. I feel you have something wrong from the way you have already described things here. Plus I do need exact info to completely resolve this type of problem.

My email is in my profile here at WC.

Thanks for the responses. I should have mentioned some of this earlier. Yes, I turned off the Firewall (Comodo Firewall Pro) and Antivirus software (avast) before installing WindowBlinds. I even turned off the start-on-bootup for both Comodo and avast, but it didn't make a difference.

My desktop was purchased a few years ago from GamePC. I turned off SLI because I'm driving three monitors. I occasionally turn SLI back on when playing games. I actually have 4 GB of RAM installed (1 GB Qimonda DDR2-667 ECC sticks in each of the four slots). The video RAM and other devices are taking up about 1.25 GB.

I ran dxdiag but didn't see any obvious problems. I will send you the text file. Agreed; I probably have something out of the ordinary causing this issue.

this may be so on your system mate but i have had SP3 since the first beta's and never has it caused me any problems whatsoever. Also all of my friends and family have SP3 and experience no problems. I doubt if this is the cause of the problems. It MAY be a contributor but i would hazard a guess that there are other problems as well. Oh by the way several of my friends and all of my family own windowblinds and all of them have no problems running it on their SP3 XP system. I would suggest looking for other reasons behind the BSOD.

On a side note, I also have never had to "turn off" my antivirus and firewall to install any stardock products. If i had to do that i would never have bought the programs to begin with. there are thousands of applications out there that install quite happily when antivirus and firewalls are running so the way i see it having to turn off your security just to install a program is not an option.

Run: sfc /scannow

Pull one stick out of that ram and uninstall Roxio. Do as yrag has instructed by going to this page here and using a command prompt in admin mode for sfc /scannow. Here is the link follow the instructions completely.

There has been issues with Roxio causing these things. You can update it to a newer version of the software and it may solve the problem.

Also run this software tool and it will test other hardware you have installed. It can be downloaded here at this link.

Once the program is installed and launched go to the report/quick report - all pages > plain text . then when that finishes save the report.txt file to the desktop and email that to me.

This should help me for sure see if it is memory and/or that Roxio program doing this.

I'll look at this when I get off work this evening.

Is it really proper for Non Stardock Support to be telling customers to install shareware and ripping their PC apart?

Support requests posted in the support forums are moderated more critically but this one is pretty open.

Having said that . . there is always a risk when one mucks about where they don't understand what they are mucking about  in.  Don't do stuff you are not comfortable doing. 

Well, I tried a few more things. I ran sfc /scannow - it prompted me for the XP disk, which I put in, and then it did its thing for a few minutes and completed. It didn't report anything, good or bad, which I guess is normal?

I then uninstalled Roxio which I don't use anyway and rebooted. I then tried installing WindowBlinds again. After installing and rebooting, the BSOD came back. I recovered the usual way by going into Safe Mode and uninstalling it from there.

I'm trying to avoid cracking open my case and yanking stuff out, so I still have all my memory installed. I haven't had any problems with other software and the machine is very stable so I kinda doubt it's bad memory.

The mystery continues...

Command prompt, type System Root\System32\Drwtsn32.exe -I

Command prompt, type System Root\System32\Drwtsn32.exe and then select the following options:

*Append to existing log file
*Create crash dump
*Visual Notification

When the computer restarts from the STOP 0xC000021A error, run Drwtsn32.exe.
View the log to determine what user mode process faulted.

(Install WB to provoke Stop error. Un-install WB to review Dump log)

JohnSmith1932,

Did you first install windowBlinds or Object Desktop as a trial before you actually paid for it? I did and then paid for WindowBlinds and updated it thru Impulse and I got the BSOD also. What I did wrong was I didn't find the page that said to: 1) Set the trial version to Windows Classicfirst, then, 2) Unload the trial version (by clicking on it in the system tray and choosing unload windowblinds). Once I did that, it installed via Impulse with no BSOD and no problem. I don't know if this will help you as you probably did read all the instructions first. If this doesn't help, I wish you luck.

artjamz2

Problem solved! I followed Shelby's advice and started swapping out memory sticks. The BSOD did not go away no matter which sticks I left in (or how many), so I started doing some more debugging. The post from artjamz2 about the OD trial did not apply to me, as I installed WindowBlinds 6.4 fresh. So I followed yrag's advice and configured Dr. Watson. I then reproduced the BSOD, booted into safe mode to uninstall it, and examined the Dr. Watson log. The crashing executable was winlogon.exe, as expected from the text of the BSOD:

Application exception occurred:
        App: \??\C:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon.exe (pid=1148)
        When: 6/5/2009 @ 20:57:05.843
        Exception number: c0000005 (access violation)

Going down a bit further, the log contained this:

*----> Stack Back Trace <----*
WARNING: Stack unwind information not available. Following frames may be wrong.
*** WARNING: Unable to verify checksum for C:\WINDOWS\system32\interceptor.dll
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found.  Defaulted to export symbols for C:\WINDOWS\system32\interceptor.dll -
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for \??\C:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon.exe
ChildEBP RetAddr  Args to Child             
0006f83c 7c80d1d8 00072ec0 00000000 73e47377 kernel32!LCMapStringW+0x2c5
0006fa80 7c80bb64 00000409 40000001 00482188 kernel32!CompareStringA+0xc1
0006faa8 00d51944 00482188 73e47377 00484f08 kernel32!lstrcmpi+0x23
0006fad4 00d52f6c 01843000 017f0000 00000001 interceptor!IncrementQuarantinedLibChangeCount+0x8f4
0006fb14 00d5ce8b 007f0000 00000000 00000001 interceptor!IncrementQuarantinedLibChangeCount+0x1f1c
0006fb68 00d5cf30 0007eb60 00000000 00000000 interceptor+0xce8b
0006fb7c 01039753 0007eb60 00081910 00081910 interceptor+0xcf30
0006fcac 0103a007 00081910 00000001 00000000 winlogon+0x39753
0006fcd4 01038a08 0007a2c0 00000000 0007a2c0 winlogon+0x3a007
0006fcfc 01031c7e 0007a2c0 7c80b741 00000000 winlogon+0x38a08
0006ff50 0103e75e 01000000 00000000 00072364 winlogon+0x31c7e
0006fff4 00000000 7ffde000 000000c8 000001f1 winlogon+0x3e75e

I didn't recognize interceptor.dll or why winlogon was calling a function with the word quarantine in it. Very fishy. So after some quick googling I verified that the interceptor.dll file is installed as part of the Tenebril SpyCatcher software, which I had installed on my system a couple years ago and had forgotten about. So I uninstalled SpyCatcher, rebooted, and installed WindowBlinds. On the next reboot, the BSOD was gone! Problem solved and I am now skinning like a champ. The weird thing is that I had SpyCatcher installed for at least 2 or 3 years and never had any problems (at least none like this) until I installed WindowBlinds.

Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions!