Sunday, June 17, 2007

SSMS and win32k.sys Blue Screen

I recently came across each user’s nightmare. The Blue Screen Of Death (aka BSOD). The BSOD occurred while I was trying to open a table in SQL Server Management Studio (aka SSMS) which was installed with my brand new SQL Server 2005.
The symptoms where not that clear because the blue screen would appear either when SSMS was trying to open the table and some other times SSMS would open the table (I was lucky enough to see the actual contents of the table) and while I was editing the cell values, the Blue screen would appear showing the following error:
*** STOP: 0x0000008E (0xc0000005,0xbf8E270C,0A8E11868,0x00000000)
*** win32k.sys - Address BF8E270C base at BF800000
The error was the same in each case. Searching around the net I found a few references to this BSOD but the following SQLServer feedback had actually a few workarounds:
No one suggested why this could be happening although there are some things in common:
  1. In each and every reference I found, this screen would appear in a laptop with intel dual core
  2. Most of these laptops had intellipoint 6.1 or later driver for their mice.
The suggested workarounds were:
  1. Turn off multiple CPU core's in BIOS: which would be an unacceptable option for me. Why buy a dual core if I am going to use it as a single core!!!
  2. Disabling hardware acceleration in the advanced display properties : I did actually try this but when no hardware acceleration is active, many programs wont run and everything gets a little bit slower
  3. Disabling or uninstalling IntelliPoint 6.1 Software (also listed in the following url http://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/Workaround.aspx?FeedbackID=262721) : This actually did the trick for me.
So after uninstalling the IntelliPoint 6.1 Software and installing the IntelliPoint 5.2 instead, the blue screens disappeared.

I hope some one might find this useful cause I was starting to believe that I will never again be able to edit the contents of my tables from SSMS...

48 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the tip - this was driving me crazy! I uninstalled Intellipoint 6.1 and this corrected it - I'll just go w/o Intellipoint until they fix the issue (my h/w wasn't in the 5.2 list).

Thanks again!

Anonymous said...

This cured my issue too - uninstalled Intellipoint 6.1 and no further issues.

Anonymous said...

Removed Intellipoint 6.1, problem solved! Thanks.

Unknown said...

Andreas,

I would like to thank you, this was driving me nuts.

The problem was also occuring while opening a table within Visual Studio 2005. Removing Intellipoint 6.1 fixed it for me.

Cheers, Nick

Anonymous said...

THANK-YOU!!! This was killing me.

I am running 2 SQL instances. SQLEXPRESS and SQL2005. I was running management studio express and thought that may be the problem, so I uninstalled it and installed full SSMS. Nada. Still the good old BSOD. Your trick sorted it out.

Once again - THANK-YOU. You sharing this was very thoughtful.

Aidan Lawless said...

Thanks Andreas,

Intellipoint seemed to be the problem in my setup too...

Cheers

Anonymous said...

Strange, because I installed my intellimouse software when I built my laptop about a month ago and I didn't have this problem. It just started today. 11/12/07.

But I uninstalled the mouse software and no BSOD...

Andreas Botsikas said...

Non deterministic Intellipoint behavior! :)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your info...Andreas Got the same problem over the last weeks... after buing a new MS keyboard set.. Stopping the ipoint.exe from Task manager and startup items. it fixed it.. No blue screen.
Appeared both in Visual Studio 2005 Server Explorer and in Sql Server Management Studio for SQL Server 2005.
The solution... is crazy enough...but it works.

Rune

Anonymous said...

Disabling the ipoint.exe service fixed it for me too.

Anonymous said...

Hi,
very good Solution.
I have the same Problem on my IBM Laptop T60p.

I have nox deinstalled the IP6.2 and installed the Version 5.2.
I Hope the BSOD is not coming back.
Many Thanks

Anonymous said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you. It looks like it solved my problem, too. I felt as if I was playing Russian Roulette each time I opened up SQL Server Management Studio. It seems that the BSODs become more frequent in time, initial installation shows no signs but as time passes (weeks+) the BSOD begin to appear.

Anonymous said...

I think we should all get together and nominate you for sainthood...my laptop was dangerously close to getting tossed out a 29th story window. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know if IntelliPoint 6.2 fixes this?

Thanks for the info!

Andreas Botsikas said...

The truth is that I haven't tried it yet. Perhaps on my new laptop I will give it a shot and notify. If anyone knows something more, please leave your experience here...

Anonymous said...

Just tested out IntelliPoint 6.2 (as opposed to 6.1). The bug is still there. Opening tables and hovering around in them seems to make the cells "jump" around, like a ghost image of the cell borders appears and then quickly disappears. This is the 'sign' of the sickness. Then after doing this a couple of times, the BSOD shows up.

I'm going to try reverting to version 5.5 now. If I don't post again within the next half hour, then it worked.

Thanks again.

Anonymous said...

Many thanks for the post, IP6.1 was the cause of the same error for me too.

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much. I was ready to scream in frustration! Downgrading to IP 5.2 worked for me.

Anonymous said...

Dude,

I installed intellipoint 6.1 over the weekend and now everytime I opened a table in SQL Sever 2005, i got the BSOD. Just uninstalled the driver......it worked.

THANKS SO MUCH

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this, I just setup a new office environment with several other elements that could have been the source of the crashes so although it did seem to happening in Management Studio I couldn't be sure what it was until I found your post.

Anonymous said...

Thank you - I've just had the same problem!!!

Darrell said...

I can confirm that IntelliPoint v6.2 does NOT solve the problem. What a fun capability.

Dan Woodward said...

Again it strikes! Thanks for the post and thanks to Google as well. Best tech-support available - other users.

Yiannis said...

dude - super thanks!! I was starting to loose my color!!

Page Brooks said...

Wow, I guess I'm not alone! I had Intellipoint 6.2 and was experiencing the same problems described above. Thanks for the tip!

keng said...

Thank you, I got same problem too.

MisterG said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Yep... Had the same problem. I noticed that whenever I used the mouse to scroll the windows in SSMS I got the BSOD. Thanks for finding the solution. I was about to reformat the HD!!!

Anonymous said...

What about the workaround of not using Open Table in the first place? There are better / more reliable ways to modify data (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE statements in a query window, for one).

Andreas Botsikas said...

It’s much faster when you want to edit the values of a small lookup table, plus since it’s a feature why not take advantage of it?!?

Anonymous said...

Because it's broken and has dozens of other problems. A few off the top of my head: it takes out vastly inefficient and unnecessary locks against the whole table, it cannot adequately update rows if there is no primary key OR if the primary key includes binary data, and BIT column data entry requires 'true' and 'false' and won't accept 1, -1 or 0.

Anonymous said...

or if it causes a blue screen? What about the people who don't know about its problems, and use it innocently, not understanding what it is doing behind your back?

Andreas Botsikas said...

Ok then. If you don't like it, do not use it. :-)

Anonymous said...

Wow, was my last reply censored? :-(

Andreas Botsikas said...

Nope. My message was deleted and rewritten to avoid spam messages... I think you made your point. Have a nice evening.

Unknown said...

Thanks for posting this solution. The BSODs I was getting were killing my productivity. The odd thing is that I've been using Intellimouse 6.1 for as long as I've owned this laptop, and the errors only started recently. I think a service pack must have been the culprit.

Jeff Roughgarden said...

Thanks for the tip. I had 6 BSODs per day, and now they're gone!

Jeff Roughgarden
MCDBA, MCSD

Anonymous said...

Intellipoint 6.3 uninstall worked for me

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tip. Removed Intellipoint 6.2 and BSOD resolved. Seems this problem has been around a while why hasn't M$ resolved this? Oh well, thanks again.

Anonymous said...

Thanx a lot for this. I was preparing for format but thankfully it seams to work now !!!
F#$%#$G Microsoft

Anonymous said...

Hi there

I'm working on a Dell Vostro 200 Desktop (XP SP2) so therefore do not have Intellipoint on my machine. but just try and connect to a DB through SSMS and BSOD appears. anyone able to help??
Thanks

Anonymous said...

Installed IP6.3 over 6.2
That did the trick for me (so far). :-)

Thanks for the tip!

Unknown said...

IP 6.3 still has the bug. The cell line ghosting issue still appears, and the system BSODs. I was going to re-format my system, so this information was very nice!

I uninstalled IP 6.3 and the problem went away... This is very weird though...

Andreas Botsikas said...

I have been using intellipoint 6.3 with SSMS 2008 for a long time now and didn't have any troubles. Perhaps they actually fixed the bugs in the newer version of ssms.

Jason Stonebraker said...

Wow... I've been dealing with this issue for months like everyone else, except that tonight after getting the BSOD, I started my computer up, but nothing would display on the monitor! It was running, but the monitor was receiving no signal. I was afraid I had lost my entire computer due to buggy Microsoft code in some obscure feature I'm compelled to use every once in a while. Luckily, after moving my graphics card to a different slot (I was trying anything and everything), my computer started working again.

I've followed the instructions provided here, but I'm scared to even test it out to see if I can use open table without my computer taking a dump, because who knows, the next time may be the last. After all, I have no more slots. :-)

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Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot. Uninstalling Intellipoint 6.1 fixed this for me.