Virus? Laptops blue screening and rebooting

[achilleus]

So far today, 7 laptops have started blue screening and rebooting. They load up, let you login, and then after a minute or so will blue screen and reboot. This has happend to one laptop after another. I have scanned and updated them all without finding anything.

Also, I deleted all of the video and NIC drivers, temp files, cookies, IE temp files, etc. I searched the web and found nothing.

Finally this evening, first one, then another started magically working again. They stopped having the issue.

There is no common software update or change that was made to all of these machines; so I have to assume it's a virus (although I know its bad to assume.)

Any ideas?? I'm at a total loss. Can't find anything in the registry (under Run or RunOnce), nothing at all out of place. And this seems to only happen to Dell laptops.

Please help. AJ
SA
HS

 

[smah]

Were they all plugged in to the wall outlets at the time? - Maybe a bad day at the power company. I've seen machines reboot at the slightest little hiccup and others where the power has to be out for almost a full second before they stop. Maybe these Dell laptops are are more susceptable to power problems than some other computers. If it happens again, see if they behave while on battery power.

 

[achilleus]

Thanks for the reply smah. They do behave the same on battery. But that is an interesting thought and one I hadn't considered. Also; they cover a range of Dell laptops. Not just one model.

Not sure how much difference it makes; but they all do get plugged into surge protectors.

Also; they reboot very quickly, but on the blue screen I see an error that ends in the word "pool". Maybe bad pool? I will check and see if I can get more of the error. AJ
SA
HS

 

[smah]

Bad Pool Caller maybe? Have a look here at stop error C2:

http://www.aumha.org/kbestop.htm

Are these laptops running XP? If so, you can disable the automatic rebooting so that you can read the stop error. Right click on My Computer, Properties, Advanced tab, Startup & Recovery Settings button, uncheck automatically restart.

 

[achilleus]

Great site by the way. Tons of good info.

The specific error on the blue screen relates to bad_pool_caller. Not sure if that will help.

It does seem that this is maybe not a virus, but instead a software update that is messing with the Dell laptops.

On the machines that have the issue, there are a series of files in c:\WINNT\Temp called GL_3.exe and GLC3.tmp. There are many of them with different numbers after the GL* (GLH4.tmp, GLG7.tmp, GL_5.exe, etc.) AJ
SA
HS

 

[smah]

Does the stop error reference any particular file name? These filenames point to Open GL information. Maybe the video drivers need to be updated (or rolled back).

 

[achilleus]

Thanks all for your help. Think I've got it solved.

MS System Management Server was installed at some point on the network. The client that gets installed on user machines was adding some sort of SMS Display adapter that was not agreeing with the Dells.

Seems to be working fine after removing it and those temp GL files.

Thanks again! AJ
SA
HS