Cumulative Post SP6 caused BSOD on Compaq server

[mcconmw]

Hi all,
I ran into a problem yesterday and I'm hoping someone has some insight into what a work around would be. We installed the cumulative post sp6 fix for NT 4.0 Monday afternoon on a Compaq 7000 server. The fix required a reboot so someone dialed in at 6 in the morning and restarted it. We arrived at 7:30 to find a Blue Screen with the message IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. Our Compaq 3200ES array controller also claimed that a drive was bad. We replaced the drive and set the array to rebuilding, but we still got the BSOD. We eventually ended up formatting the C: drive. Out of curiousity after the format, I inserted the "bad" drive into the hot swap position and it returned to an active status. We installed two copies of NT on the c: partition and used the recovery copy to restore the c: drive from tape. We rebooted into the restored copy and we were back in business. In order to determine for sure that the patch was the culprit and not merely a coincidence coinciding with a failed drive, we reapplied the Post sp6 patch and upon reboot once again we got the same BSOD and the same drive (which was in a different slot this time) reverted to failed. We recovered again quickly and the server is running happily without the cumulative patch. This was a production machine so we can't really test many other scenarios.

Has anyone else ran into trouble with the cumulative post sp6 patch? The BSOD code typically indicates a driver/device issue. Does anyone have any insights as to what the patches could be replacing to affect the array controller/hard drives? Thanks in advance.

I love 16 hr days.

 

[Highland]

The only thing I've seen with Compaq Server not re-booting after application of a server pack was STOP 0x0000007B error, although the symptoms are fairly similar....

These were resolved by parallel install and replacing the file AIC78xx.sys with it's pre-service pack version...

Path to this file is c:\winnt\system32\drivers....

Check MS article Q214810.....

also worth a read.....

http://www.compaq.com/support/techpubs/customer_advisories/

EH980721_CW01.html

 

[jaeddy]

I ran in to a couple of problems with the roll-up patch, one resulting in a complete reinstall due to a corrupted winlogon.exe(!). I found that after the patch was installed my monitoring software threw off bogus memory bottleneck errors, etc. I successfully backed of the patch, then proceeded to test on some non-critical systems and wound up hitting lots of C0000050 STOP errors. Could not work around those so I had to reinstall. For the moment we've elected to hold off on the patch pending further investigation.

This could pose some problems, particularly since the malformed rpc patch is included ONLY in the roll-up (at least that's the only place I've found it). If MS keeps issuing required patches only in the rollups it could make patching the system a real adventure.