Tracking down a faulty driver/hardware issue

[CajunBadger]

I've got a desktop run XP Media Center 2002 SP3 and been encountering some freezes and flakiness. In looking at the minidumps, I see a system_thread_exception_not_handled_m (1000007e) occurring with fltmgr.sys. In reading another post here, the possible cause is a faulty driver. While I plan on updating all drivers, I would like to pinpoint the one potentially causing this error.

The post says to take a look in Device Manager and match up the exception code address to the device memory resources being used. In viewing resources by type, the address appears to fall in the range of the pci bus (the address is 806e694f and the memory range 7FF00000 - FEBFFFFF is listed as PCI Bus). In looking at its properties, it appears to be part of XP Media center (driver file is pci.sys) which is current with the latest updates.

Am I looking at this correctly? Is there anything else I need to do to pinpoint this better?

Thanks in advance!

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Welcome to the Windows Forum.

Are you sure that the error is 0x1000007E, and not 0x0000007E? There are thousands of results from Google on fltmgr.sys and 0x0000007E.

What is the version of your fltmgr.sys - it should be 5.1.2600.5512.

If you want to check if any of your device drivers are seriously out-of-date, use http://www.drivermax.com/. Make sure that you backup all your drivers (using the DriverMax function) before you actually start updating them. Also, do not blindly believe anything that is offered as a driver upgrade, but is actually a downgrade (e.g. from 5.1.26000.5512 -> 5.1.0.1006).

[CajunBadger]

Thanks! Yes, that is the correct code...google does have some entries with this code listed when searching for fltmgr.sys and system_thread_exception_not_handled_m. I've tried a few different driver updaters and did notice they do have to be double-checked...even ended up hunting down individual ones myself to ensure I truly was getting the latest and greatest.

And checking, that is the version I've got.

I am wondering if I was going about this the right way. I'd hoped the address from the minidump would point to a hardware driver that could be updated, but if I'm looking at the memory address range correctly, not much can do with pci.sys (though am wondering if it's something using pci.sys as opposed to the driver/file itself). But question is, is there any other way to pinpoint it beyond updating all drivers and waiting to see if it occurs again?

Again thanks for the input!