Beyond

There are those in the geek community who say that Microsoft have seen every error report and there’s no point sending in error reports to them. As a consequence of this they switch error reporting off, advise others to do likewise, and no longer bother sending error reports to Microsoft.

Admittedly I was starting to formulate the same opinion lately: Fairly recently I had a computer - a self-build - that had started repeatedly encountering stop errors. My primary hard-disk had recently died, which’ll teach me not to use second-hand disks in computers that I build for myself. (To save on costs I’d bought a batch of few second-hand disks off eBay which I thought I’d use for experimentation and in prototype-builds at the time. Most of them were still stuck in unused prototypes etc that were stored in the junk cupboard, but one of them was lying around spare when I built this computer, so I used it as a primary disk and used the larger disk that I’d bought new and intended for purpose as an additional disk.) This caused a spate of stop errors, ending in the computer’s refusal to boot at all. Having replaced the faulty disk and reinstalled everything I assumed that the system would operate as normal. I was surprised when, a week later, I encountered another stop error, followed by another the next day, and the next…

Several days of fairly intensive tests showed that the component causing this problem was the floppy drive, which I replaced and the stop errors stopped. I had sent every error report to Microsoft, who each time informed me that the error was caused by a device or driver.

Very helpful: I checked every driver and updated if possible. I checked every device thoroughly; ending with the floppy drive which was faulty. All those hours could have been saved if Microsoft had been more specific about which device or driver had caused the errors.

I started to think that Microsoft were just deleting most/all error reports from Windows XP users: After all XP was now considered outdated by them, and it appeared that Microsoft were only interested in Vista. I didn’t switch error reporting off, neither did I get any more stop errors. - Until yesterday.

This time M$ reported that the stop error had been caused by malware in the form of spooldr.sys. I ran all the checks Microsoft suggested, but found nothing, and no spooldr.sys either. I’d had an identical report when my disk was dying- surely the new disk wasn’t on its way out too? Today I encountered another unexpected stop error. The error report went off to M$, and I was expecting them to say either it was caused by a device or driver, or by spooldr.sys: The former telling me that they couldn’t be bothered to be specific, the latter telling me that they didn’t have a clue.

I was extremely surprised to see the message that they returned on sending the error to them:-

"This problem is being researched"

"Thank you for submitting a problem report to Microsoft. At this time we are researching the cause of this problem."

So they are still interested in error reports regarding XP!

"Please continue to submit all Windows problem reports. This will ensure that when a solution is available, you will receive updated information."

Either way round; to my mind it’s a Microsoft fault. The other computer that I built for myself shortly before this one is a totally different model. (One from my "Exel" line of "Kustomised" computers, and which runs like a dream with only a single hiccup so far after a year plus.) The one in question is from my "INXPense" line of "Kustomised" computers; of which I’ve built quite a few, and none of which have been plagued with any unexplained issues. The component models currently incorporated in this computer have all been previously used in other INXPense computers which have all been shipped to customers and which as far as I am aware are still working perfectly today.

The only untested, "un-prototyped" shall we say, thing about this individual unique computer is the combination of components: The power supply and motherboard are standard and are used in all INXPense computers, as is the case and lower front panel, recessed and covered by a sliding flap. The IDE DVD-RW drive is of the type used in most INXPense computers. The graphics card ditto. The processor type as far as core and speed is concerned has been incorporated in one other INXPense computer. The identical Seagate SATA HDD has also been incorporated into one other INXPense computer, but as a secondary disk. Identical RAM with identical frequency of operation has been incorporated into a number of… All INXPense computers bar one are fitted with a floppy drive.

At some point in the future I’m going to try installing a different HDD, processor, and probably almost every other component too, until and if I can discover what is causing this latest issue, if it has anything to do with the way the machine is constructed, unless Microsoft beat me to it.

Yes, you’re right; I was going off topic somewhat. Microsoft have said in essence that they are interested in what went wrong, that they don’t know what went wrong, and that they want to try and work out the problem so that they can find a solution. They are interested in my error reports that I send in to them.

Perhaps they have seen 99% of error reports before, and maybe they do know what your particular problem is, despite their reply only being sketchy in nature. I suggest, though, that despite this Microsoft’s customers don’t switch automatic error reporting off and that they do continue to send error reports to Microsoft for their analysis. - Even if they have seen most error reports 1000 times or more before, what happened very recently to me proves that they maybe haven’t seen every conceivable error report, that they don’t have a cause and/or solution for every error, and that they may still be totally clueless as to some, possibly extremely rare errors, that can occur with even "outdated" operating systems.

Your thoughts? Please do comment.

Addendum: I eventually discovered that the fault was file-system corruption which was causing a mis-read of data and a subsequent BSOD, as well as an old outdated driver installed for the graphics card from an installation CD. It took a while to locate the f/s corruption, and the problem was initially pre-diagnosed by deduction. However the system works fine now.