BSOD from MS Update KB920872

System is a Dell D800 WinXP-Pro (SP2) w/ZA, AntiVir, SpyBot1.4 Ad-Aware and SpywareBlaster,
that had been operating fine with no problems.

10PM last night the 'shield' said it had UPDATES and after a while, asked
to reboot, clicked "Ok". Big Blue Screen Of Death, no load of Windows, file
missing. I am 'on the road' without an XP disc...

Used GoBack to recover and turned Auto Update off, Looked at a lot of NGB
Recovery files and it looked like this "Audio Update" KB920872.
Others were Malicious Software Removal Tool: KB890830,
Security Updates for Windows XP: KB920685, KB919007
and Update for Windows XP: KB922582.

Went to MS Update and ran the Manual Update and all five loaded and this one
kept showing up again and again (it was "installed successfully" four times).

I went through all the steps on the MS KB on the subject
but it was This solution posted on the MS Forum {here}
by Eric [MSFT] that finally solved that problem, turned Auto
Update back on now and everything seems fine now.

Info below from MS Update:

it was to fix this problem:

All I ever have used 'Audio' for is XM Radio's Internet Service when in a Hotel Room.

Worked great before and works great now.

Art

Hope that the above may help someone; I did see a similar report {Here}

 

I usually don't update my windows and I also have automatic updates disabled. IMO it's useless to add them as long as you have a good AV and/or FW. My PC works great without them.

 

Was a tempting thought, without GoBack, I would have had a Real Problem, as I could not even reach 'Safe' without RecoveryDisc (1000miles away).

Before the advent of MS Auto Update (3+? years ago), It was pure luck that I had gone to MS Update on 4/24 before a particulary nasty boot virus was released on 4/27 and it did not get into NAV Signatures until 4/29 (+/-).

That malware had been quickly released in response to MS's HotFix that closed the exposure, but knew a lot of folk that got snared because they did not have the MS Update (or AntiVirus Sig) in time and their systems were frozen on boot.

I am now a believer in the multi-prong defense and appreciate (and endure the inevitable glitches) of automatic AntiVir Updates, MS Updates and wish I could set SpyBot, Ad-Aware and SpywareBlaster for auto-update.

 

I got 5 Microsoft updates including the one mentioned in the thread title on Sept. 13 and I haven't gotten any problems or noticed anything. I don't use the audio feature much on the PC though so the update may just have been installed and sitting there.

 

The Update was initially issued August 16th, according to the 'fix' linked above, problem had been with some OEM installed Audio.

Test on install would be to 'Start, all programs, Ms Update and see if it keeps showing up as a 'needed' Security Update.

My "History" showed four "successful" installs, yet it still showed as needed on each check.

 

I am now not sure of the cause of the above mentioned BSOD that was concurrent with that MS Update.

Yesterday there was a second BSOD (in 20 months) also at least close to another MS Update and 18 hours following install of BufferZone.

Since I now had my WinXP disc, I noted the message on failed boot: "missing or corrupt <windows root> System32\hal.dll"
but WinXP & SP2 discs were of no use (their 'hal's were too old) and was forced to again GoBack to start Windows.

A look at this kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm

Had the following at the bottom of the page:

Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL.dll) had several versions; XP, SP1, SP2 and the ServicePack version that somehow never made it into System32 from a two year ago MS Update..

The one existing in my System32 was a month older and 70% of the size of the version in my C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386, copy/paste/reboot ended in a reinstall of every single hardware driver.

System runs faster with less than half the average load on the CPU now and time will tell if this had been the true cause of the crash. *

I now have 99% of the latest MS Update (that was lost through GoBack) and it should soon ask to reboot, This turned out to be a "NVIDA display software update released on October 26, 2004" which is several months older than the one on my system, so no-thank-you.
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*edit:- The reason it runs faster and with less 'CPU Load' is that it now no longer loads ACPI, (only "Power Option" is to show an icon) CPU now stays at 2GHz unless SpeedStep is disabled and then it stays at 599MHz.

Ever since my first "Phoenix Power Management" I have always thought that "Power Management" was more troublesome than it was worth, Standby was never used if I wanted best stability on next use anyway.

Just in case anyone else gets the 'HAL' Crash, a better repair (than the 'Kelly' method linked above) would be a repair of the boot.ini from Recovery Console.

I intend to run as a 'PIC' instead of 'APIC' for a while as I value stability over battery life.

A lot of "Security" for me is Stability.