Blue Screens Caused by Pool Corruption Due to Registry Handle Leak

• Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 4.0
• Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0
• Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0, Terminal Server Edition

SYMPTOMS

After a fairly long period of continuously using Attachmate Extra V6.3, the computer displays blue screen errors randomly.

CAUSE

These blue screen errors are caused by an application containing a registry handle leak. This leak occurs because an application continuously reopens a registry key but never closes it. After this has happened 65,535 times, the open instance count for this key wraps round to zero making the kernel think that there is no longer any open handles to this key. The next time an instance of the key is closed, the storage used by the kernel to reference the key is deleted.

However, any time subsequent to this that the key is opened or closed, the freed storage is written to again. This causes free pool corruption and eventually the system will crash when this freed storage is referenced in any way.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Windows NT 4.0 or Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition. For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q152734 How to Obtain the Latest Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Windows NT 4.0 and Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition. This problem was first corrected in Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4.0 and Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition Service Pack 4.

Additional query words: 4.0

Keywords          : NT4SP4Fix kbbug4.00 kbfix4.00.sp4 NTSrvWkst 
Version           : WinNT:4.0
Platform          : 
Issue type        : kbbug 

Last Reviewed: April 10, 1999