Random STOP 8E BSODs

This problem has plagued for us the past couple of years (about June 2008). Randomly, through out the company, we get a random STOP 8E BSOD on computers at bootup. User logs in and bang: STOP 8E in NTOSKNRL.EXE. Very rarely, this comes up as a STOP 8E in EAMON.SYS. If you reboot, the PC/laptop will boot without any problems. We are running Windows XP SP3 across the board and have had this issue across ESET 3.0 and now 4.0. It happens on new computers, old computers, ones running standard image and others the stock OEM Dell image. Eventually, the problem goes away and then comes back. It always comes in batches: multiple computers will BSOD with the same error message.

Why do I think ESET is the problem? Well, I looked in our ticketing system and right around the time we deployed ESET in replacement of Symantec in May 2008, all these BSOD tickets started appearing 2 weeks later. I even got this error on a brand new Optiplex 755 computer. I formatted the drive, put Windows 2003 server R2 on it and after a few logins, up comes STOP 8E in NTOSKRNL.EXE.

I took a guy that was really a bad case: about 3 BSODs a week with 8E, took off ESET and put on Microsoft Security Essentials. For the past 2 months, he has not BSODed once. The kicker of course is that when you look at the mini dumps, the problem child is NTOSKRNL and generally not EAMON. However, this can't be a NTOSKRNL problem or Microsoft would get like a million complaints a day.

Any one have any ideas? I haven't approached ESET tech support, because I fear they are just going to blame my hardware or Windows setup. I would really like to just dump ESET completely and go with Forefront just to see if this BSOD problem goes away.

 

In the event of BSOD, generate a complete memory dump per the instructions here and convey it to ESET (or simply upload it to an ftp and PM me the link to it). It could be that another driver is not written properly and interferes with some of the ESET drivers. Recently we've had a case with a developer of a USB component driver who was claiming we were responsible forr BSOD. Since we supplied them with a small relevant portion of the code causing BSOD with their driver, we haven't heard back.

 

Did you install anything in addition to 2003R2 and ESET? Perhaps drivers for network printers, or firewall / remote access / remote update / patching / inventory software?

We're running 122 PCs and servers and we never have this problem, yet you have it on several systems. It does sound like a conflict with something else you're installing, something which seems benign.



Jim

 

Unforunately, when I try to private message you, it tells me the private messaging system is unavailable.

However, I did get a 2GB dump from the STOP 8E and zipped it down to a 187MB file here: http://leinss.com/memory.zip

If you could take a look, that would be great!

 

Could you try disabling Anti-Stealth and restarting the computer to see if it helps? I assume there's a sort of interference between it and IBM Client Access.

 

Thanks for your quick response. It might take a while to respond back as this problem can "hide" for weeks and then come back, but I will have all the techs do this for every stop 8E ticket they get.

Thanks!

 

As a followup...

I would like to thank Marcos for his suggestion of disabling the anti-stealth feature. Over these many months, we have found disabling anti-stealth indeed stops the STOP 8E at boot up on random computers.

 

We would like to inquire if you still experience BSOD with a fully updated EAV and Self-defense enabled.