Intermittent bsod crash with nipalk.sys

[Rob Hingle]

After using our PXI-1045 chassis with no problems for over a year, a startup problem began to creep up on us.  Occasionally the computer would crash on startup with a blue screen of death, but simply cycling power to the chassis and computer always fixed the problem the few times it would show up.  More recently the problem seems to come up at least once a week, taking several cycles of unplugging and a couple times even a system restore (which may or may not have actually done anything to fix the problem).  The blue screen of death says system error in nipalk.sys PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA.  stop 0x00000050 (0xF7B06000, 0x00000000, 0xF7332A71, 0x00000000)  address F7332A71 base at F72F5000 (and a whole lot more generic what-to-do indications presumably from Microsoft)  I have seen the same problem with this chassis on a computer running Labview 7.1.1 and on one running 8.2.  When it happens, several of the PXI cards blink red for a second.  Is this a traceble error?  It is beginning to cripple our test station.
Thanks,
Rob Hingle
858-571-1111

[Chad B]

Rob,

The PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA is one of those wonderfully vague errors that is tough to troubleshoot, and even tougher when it happens only intermittently.  Usually this error is a result of either bad sectors on the hard drive or bad addresses in your RAM, but it can also be caused by a variety of hardware problems.   I do have a few questions that might help:

1) Are you using an embedded PXI controller or a MXI cable connected to a desktop computer?
2) Have you changed the hard drive or RAM in your computer/controller recently?
3) Have you added any modules to your PXI chassis?

A few things to try troubleshooting-wise, although they would be much more informative if we could reliably recreate the problem:

1) Try removing one or more of the modules from the PXI chassis and see if one of the cards is causing the problem.
2) Run a hard drive scan from Windows and see if it detects any problems with your hard drive.
3) Run a memory scanning utility, such as MemTest86, and see if there are any problems with your RAM.

Good luck, and let me know if you find out anything else!

[Rob Hingle]

Just to clarify, we are using an MXI control system, with an MXI card in EACH of two computers we're having the problem with, so the problem is pretty clearly on the PXI chassis or in the modules.  I think the next step is to try each module individually.

[MickeyD]

Hi Rob,

It does seem that your modules are the most likely source of the trouble.  I wondered if you had gotten the drivers on your more up to date system upgraded and seen if we see the same behavior with the newest version of NI-PAL.  From a hardware perspective the best way to begin testing would be pulling the boards one at a time and seeing if you can start it up.  It might be faster to pull them all and see if it starts up, that would allow us to decide if the chassis or the MXI-4 connection is where the problem lies.  We spoke over the phone and I sent an email or two, if neither of those got through please let me know, but I would recommend we work on it through that communication path, becuase those emails get to me quicker than the discussion forumn posts due.

Have a great day,

Michael D
Applications Engineering
National Instruments