Bad Pool Header - One Possible Fix

[Alan22]

Every so often I'm confronted with an issue where common troubleshooting/repair techniques just doesn't work. It can be somewhat challenging to find a solution for the issue, but very satisfying when the solution is found. The other day was one of those days for me.

Issue: Windows 7 Professional w/ Bad_Pool_Header BSOD.
The BSOD appears when:
1 - An MS Office or PDF attachment is opened from Outlook, or if a document is double clicked on* (let's say from the My Documents folder). But, if Word, Excel or Acrobat is started first and documents are opened from within the program everything works fine. Outlook 2010 & Office 2010 are installed along with Acrobat Standard v9. *Note: this doesn't happen with all saved documents. There didn't seem to be any pattern associated with those that opened fine and those that didn't.
2 - Firefox is started. As the home page is loading the Bad_Pool_Header BSOD appears. Home page is Google. IE8 works fine.

There may be other causes where the bsod appears, but those can be reproduced at will.

After performing the customary maintenance routines, malware scans, driver update/rollback, system restore and running diagnostics on the hardware (including the memory) the issue persisted. I also uninstalled/reinstalled Office 2010 & Acrobat.

I then stumbled onto the cause of the Bad_Pool_Header BSOD......Fonts. When I accessed the Fonts folder either through Windows Explorer or Control Panel, instant BSOD. Attempting to change a font from within Word 2010 also resulted in the BSOD. Trying to restore font settings from within Control Panel didn't work to solve the issue. Accessing the Fonts folder in Safe Mode also caused the BSOD.

I solved the issue by booting off a recovery disc, accessing the file system and replacing the Fonts folder with the Fonts folder I copied from my laptop (also Win 7 Pro). I originally tried to identify the font that was causing the trouble, but that proved to be pointless.

This was the first time I ever ran into this particular issue and I hope this post can possibly help a fellow tech in the future.

 

[dannyd]

Good job sounds like it was one of those moment's that make you feel like just chucking the pc across the room lol

 

[Styxbound]

Good show, Allen. Reminds me of how much I have to learn about the software side of this business.

 

[Vicenarian]

Fantastic troubleshooting. Good job. It can sure feel good to solve tricky issues like these.

 

[Technotch]

nice. hope I can remember this post when my turn comes.

 

[Alan22]

.....sounds like it was one of those moment's that make you feel like just chucking the pc across the room lol

Yeah, you got that right.

 

[Platte Computer Repair]

I know this is a older post but I came across this issue a couple days ago. My client had worked with Dell tech support for quite a while without a fix. Ended up uninstalling Adobe Reader and installed FoxIt. Works fine now. She is happy to be able to view and print her PDF's without the BSOD's.

Seems to also be another fix for the problem.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

I know this is a older post but I came across this issue a couple days ago. My client had worked with Dell tech support for quite a while without a fix. Ended up uninstalling Adobe Reader and installed FoxIt. Works fine now. She is happy to be able to view and print her PDF's without the BSOD's.

Seems to also be another fix for the problem.

More of a workaround than a fix. Many of the reasons for pdfs is so users don't need to have hundreds of fonts installed on their systems. What if the client wants to create a document?

Fonts have always been big with Macs with so many folks doing graphic design and desktop publishing. OSX has an application called font book which helps with controlling font issues such as resolving duplicates and finding the bad fonts. I did a data recovery the other day and migrated all the users data and applications back to their machine. I was testing office and trying to open any Office app it would be on the opening screen at the point of optimizing fonts and hang there so I could only force quit Office. Did the same thing in a safe boot, but didn't do it when I created a new user. I went into font book and checked the fonts and it came up with 78 of the 546 or so fonts were questionable. Tried to select the questionable fonts and remove them within font book and it hung. Went and turned off the the users fonts, tried to remove again in font book and it still hung. Finally just had to manually go through and remove the 78 fonts one at a time manually in the users font folder, then all was well. I could have just copied the users font folder from another known good working machine, but folks with so many fonts that do this stuff professionally get touchy about that stuff if all of a sudden half of their fonts are gone.

 

[JustInspired]

Not one for thread necromancy but this belongs here...

Apart from having a week from hell for other reasons, I have a machine on the bench that has been driving me crazy with BSODs.
This is a build that we delivered to our client last week and they had it for a day or two before telling me it was randomly blue screening when they were online. I threw every single hardware and stress test we had at our disposal - stable as a rock.
The crash dump analysis was vague, BAD_POOL_HEADER with references to ntoskrnl.exe and win32k.sys.
Ran driver verifier - no help. Even disabled the onboard NIC and was about to install a USB NIC when I got it to blue screen again. Then a pattern started to emerge... Firefox seemed to be one of the things that could make it happen, however, it could be a few minutes before it would crash after opening FF.
Did a search on Google for Firefox BAD_POOL_HEADER and bingo! A page on Technibble!

I verified the issue was font related - in fact if I try to open the %Windows%\Fonts folder in Windows Explorer, the machine blue screens instantly.
I can't find a way to establish what font is the cause, so I'll probably replace the whole folder.

What a waste of time! We definitely did not make any money on that build but I guess this is a lesson learned that I won't soon forget. Sods Law means I'll probably never come up against it again.

Just a word of caution... I think this happened after running FABS on his old XP box and then restoring the profile on the new one. It also copies the Fonts folder by default so I'm pretty sure that's where everything went screwy.