XP rebooting, bad_pool_header

Olja,

Is your PC a laptop with a touchpad? I see iTouch.exe in your HJT log.

When I tried to plug an optical mouse into either the USB port or the PS2 port of my laptop PC it gave me severe problems. I eventually found out that it was clashing with the touchpad. Internally the touchpad is a PS2 mouse. I also found out that I needed to disable the touchpad in the BIOS settings to be able to use the external optical mouse. The BIOS settings for it were too confusing for me so I gave up and used a PS2 external mouse instead. That works fine and plugging it in disables the touchpad.

I had previously plugged an optical mouse into my desktop PC without any problems. But that PC did not have a touchpad or any other mouse on it.

HTH

Hi Gunny, no this is a proper desktop PC. The itouch.exe is for Logitech keyboards with extra navigational buttons.

Hello Olja,
I think your problems are caused by an Add-On to IE, most likely it is ActiveX.
Go into IE, click on Tools/Internet Options. Click the Security tab, and make sure that the setting for Internet is "Medium". If not, change it and click Apply.
Now click on the "Custom Level" button on the same page. A new window opens with a list of ActiveX and other things. Change ALL lines (5 in my W2K-IE) with ActiveX in them to be set to "Disable". :knock:
Then click on OK, OK again and Exit IE.
Open IE again, and browse to that website that crashes your PC. :unch:
Hopefully it is OK now.

Browsers such as Firefox and Opera do not use ActiveX, that is the big difference.

SP2 added some more tools into IE, one of them is Crash Detection.
Read about it here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/sp2brows.mspx#EPAA
Perhaps this can be activated, to show which add-on causes your crash?

Another one is the Add-on management. Click on Tools/Manage Add-ons.
Select "Add-ons that have been used by IE" shows a list of what has been used sofar.
Select "Add-ons currently loaded in IE" shows all add-ons, including those that have now been disabled. To UPDATE an add-on, select it and click Update ActiveX (??? might not work after you disabled ActiveX, see above).
To DISABLE an add-on, select it and click on the Disable button under Settings. Click OK on the warning, click OK on the panel, Exit IE and restart it.

My W2K does not have these "goodies" (or "baddies"), so I cannot advise you there.
Play around with them if you like.

Other than that, as long as IE works fine when updating Windows, I think you should stick to the likes of Firefox.

In security settings for IE I have only "medium" and "high" level… now it’s on “high” and I tried the risky site and – it was OK!!! I’ll use IE today to see if it will be ok… as you said – “to be sure to be sure”
I didn’t had to change ActiveX settings, everything was disabled but I guess it all changed when I set IE security on high level?

I know I had to install ActiveX (wasn’t part of original IE) and I remembered that it was for MSI Live Update so I visited their page and I got a message about ActiveX – to allow it or not. I have to, in order to be able to get the updates and I saw that my settings changed again back to “medium”. Does that mean that if I allow ActiveX once (for some special url when I need them) I have to switch settings back to high every time?
I just wonder, it’s not the problem because I am addicted on Firefox now so I’ll use IE only for Windows and other updates…

Thank you realblackstuff!
And thank you too Gunny (rbs gave you right answers instead of me)

Btw, I’ll check out that Add-on management and Crash detection later…

Thank you again!
I hope I won’t be back here later during the day to let you know that I got same BSOD again

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Edit:
I checked it out now more thoroughly:
When I go to the “risky” page with IE security on HIGH – everything is fine,
When I go with IE security on MEDIUM – I get a BSOD.

So now, finally, we know what the problem is/was.

Ok, now some more questions
Keeping security level on high is disabling me from i.e. using yahoo mail and I guess there will be other “restrictions”. Now that we know that ActiveX was causing the problem, can I fix it somehow? Why does it causes such problems as it does?
I am just curious… and lazy I guess (“search” button on my keyboard is taking me directly to yahoo and I use yahoo’s mail a lot)

You should keep the Security Level at "Medium" to allow access to other websites and functions. We just need to "tweak" it's settings a bit.

When Security level is set to "High", all 5 controls are set to "Disable" as you rightly remarked. This stifles internet-access.
When Security level is set to "Medium" (preferred default), it uses:
prompt - download signed AX controls
disable - download unsigned AX controls
disable - Initialize and script AX controls not safe
enable - Run AX controls and plug-ins
enable - Script AX controls save for scripting
You never mentioned that you were prompted for an AX control, so we can leave the first setting as is. The next two are disabled already, so no problem either.

To pinpoint which AX is at fault, you need to experiment:
enable - Run AX controls and plug-ins: leave as is, change the next to:
disable - Script AX controls save for scripting
Click Apply, OK, exit IE, restart IE, call the bad website.
If no BSOD, it was a script, more about that later. Try Yahoo-mail. If that works OK, you are all sorted for the moment. Now try to also access Yahoo-mail from Firefox, that should work too!

If BSOD, change the settings as follows:
prompt - Run AX controls and plug-ins
disable - Script AX controls save for scripting
Click Apply, OK, exit IE, restart IE, call the bad website.
If you are prompted, write down what they want, then allow it. There may be a couple of prompts before you catch the evil-doer.
If the last one before the BSOD was a plug-in, you can disable it afterwards as mentioned in my previous post.
Let us know what caused the BSOD.

Do this first end report back, please. We'll tackle "Script"-problems (if any) in the next post. OK?
Best of Irish....

I ma getting tired of all this restarts and BSODs and… fuj!

The situation is following:

BSOD

Reboot without any warning or BSOD.

I have 7 lines for ActiveX (maybe some important i.e. nr7?)

1. Ask automatically about ActiveX (enable/disable)
2. Get unsigned ActiveX (enable/prompt/disable)
3. Get signed ActiveX (enable/prompt/disable)
4. Initiate and run script for “unsafe” ActiveX (enable/prompt/disable)
5. Run ActiveX and plug-ins (enable/prompt/admin/disable)
6. Run script on ActiveX which are marked as “safe” (enable/prompt/disable)
7. “ Behaviour” for binary code and script (enable/admin/ disable)


Btw, I am translating so - sorry if my late-night-translations are funny!

Olja ; I just thought I would mention an idea to reduce the frustration of resetting ActiveX etc. for certain Websites.You and Real.. can fix that stuff.
In the mean time
If you look under,Tools>Internet Options >Security You will see that you can add websites that you trust here (Trusted Sites Zone),Keep the security level at Medium and when you go to those sites and you have High settings for the rest of the Internet Zone. You will find these sites are automatically allowed to function without your direct input.
If this was mentioned earlier in this post I apologize,but I just couldn't see any longer.

Hey, that’s a really great and simple solution!
But the thing is that I really don’t need any “trusted” sites. I use IE only for mail and updates and that works fine so I can keep my security level on normal.
Ok, MSI update site needs ActiveX so I guess I could set IE security on high and mark MSIs site as trusted but it’s not necessary because I won’t be using IE for anything else in the future. It is annoying to open a page and then fear for a second or two that I’ll get BSOD.

If Real can help me set IE settings to work fine with “all” pages without causing any more BSODs – great! If not – Firefox is solution

XP always wants to do better than W2K, so you got 2 extra lines (Big deal).
My advise to set them as follows, using the bold ones.

1. Ask automatically about ActiveX (enable/disable)
2. Get unsigned ActiveX (enable/prompt/disable)
3. Get signed ActiveX (enable/prompt/disable)
4. Initiate and run script for “unsafe” ActiveX (enable/prompt/disable)
5. Run ActiveX and plug-ins (enable/prompt/admin/disable)
6. Run script on ActiveX which are marked as “safe” (enable/prompt/disable)
7. “ Behaviour” for binary code and script (enable/admin/ disable)

Rather than IE, use the Avant browser in future if you cannot use Firefox for some reason.
Avant also works correctly for Windows-updates. And it is also a tabbed browser, same as Firefox.
In Avant, under Tools, there is a selection "Disable ActiveX". Click that so it gets a "V" mark in front.
Then you can go to that critical BSOD-webpage http://forums.tweaktown.com/showthread.php?t=18119 without crashing.
Untick the "Disable ActiveX" when you are done. Avant uses the same registry-settings as IE, but they are just easier to find and change than in IE.
Or avoid that website (forum from the competition!) in future. :unch:
What happens if you just go to http://forums.tweaktown.com/ does that crash as well, or is this only when you look at the specific thread? Then the cause might be one of the footnotes or signatures of the people who have posted in that thread. Worth checking out!

What do you say, solved to your satisfaction, or would you like to continue this "Saga"? :grinthumb

The end

Ok… Settings are as you suggested and of course – restart but without BSOD. Ok, at least one error message less!

I don’t need Avant because IE works fine for updates and that’s all I’ll use it for. At least you discovered what the problem is/was so now I can relax. I was really worried that something seriously is wrong with my pc and that I would need to send it back to the store so now I am kinda happy knowing that it’s “only” stupid IE.

It seems that this is just impossible to solve so I think we can end this saga (but I have ideas for new ones already! :haha: )

Look forward to them.
In the meantime, happy Computing!

Error Code 0x00000019

I am a computer technician and I found the same issue on one computer today and it was a faulty wireless PCI network card.