Bugcheck 0xC4 on Windows 2008 R2 when Driver Verifier is not enabled
Hello everyone,
It's been a while since I have posted something, but I've been seeing a new trend now and though I'd share it with you.
I've seen a lot of situations lately where Windows 2008 R2 servers are crashing with bugcheck 0xC4 (DRIVER_VERIFIER_DETECTED_VIOLATION) after a reboot even though Driver Verifier is NOT enabled on the system... a bit strange but it seems to be related to some CBS corruption that is already present on the machine.
Here are a few steps to help get you on your way:
- Boot the system into Recovery Mode (by either booting with a Windows DVD and choosing Repair your computer or by pressing F8 reputedly at boot and choosing Repair your computer)
- Open Command Prompt
- Use diskpart to identify the OS drive letter and the System Reserved partition drive letter that have been assigned in the recovery environment:
- diskpart
- list volume
- note down the drive letter of the OS drive and of the System Reserved partition
- I will use C: for the system reserved partition below and D: for the OS partition but please change them to what you have on your system
- Load the SYSTEM registry hive from the OS so that we check and make sure Driver Verifier is not enabled:
- regedit
- Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
- Click on File -> Load Hive
- Browse to D:\Windows\System32\config
- Click on the SYSTEM file (the one that has no extension)
- Click Open
- Give it the name offlineSystemHive
- Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\offlineSystemHive\Select
- Check the Default value
- If Default is set to 1 then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\offlineSystemHive\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
- If Default is set to 2 then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\offlineSystemHive\ControlSet002\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
- and so on
- Check if the following registry keys are present:
- VerifyDriverLevel
- VerifyDrivers
- If they are then delete them and reboot the system
- If not then close Registry Editor and go back to the Command Prompt
- Run the following commands:
- D:
- cd D:\Windows\WinSxS
- dir *.xml
- If you see a file called pending.xml run the following command:
- ren pending.xml pending.xml.old
- Run the following command in Command Prompt
- sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C: /offwindir=C:\Windows
- Once finished reboot the system
Hope this helps someone get out of this sort of situation.
Best of luck!