How to use Driver Verifier

Products

• Symantec Products

Issue/Introduction

Your computer has crashed and created a memory dump file. The BugCheck may be BAD_POOL_HEADER (19), and the WinDbg tool informs you that:

"The internal pool links must be walked to figure out a possible cause of the problem, and then special pool applied to the suspect tags or the driver verifier to a suspect driver."

It is also possible that the BugCheck is something different, but you or the Support Engineer still suspect memory corruption of some kind to be responsible for the crash.

You would like to have step by step instructions on how to use driver verifier to apply special pool tagging to identify the suspect driver.

 BugCheck 19, BAD_POOL_HEADER (19)

Resolution

Before you start, ensure that the memory dump is a full or complete memory dump. (For more information please see: support.microsoft.com/kb/254649)

For a detailed description of Driver Verifier and its options, please see: support.microsoft.com/kb/244617

To enable Driver Verifier, click on Start > Run and type "verifier" without the quotes:

Check the following settings:

"Create custom settings.."

 Select "Select individual settings.."

 Select "Special Pool":

 

Select "Select driver.."

 

In this example, Wpshelper.sys is selected, but this could be any suspected driver:

 

If a driver  doesn't show up in the list, click on "Add currently not loaded driver(s) to the list..)

Click finish and reboot when prompted.

A couple of things can happen then. Either verifier catches the selected driver doing something out of bounds and crash the system, or nothing related to that driver.

After rebooting, you can launch verifier again and select:

 

"Display information...":

 

 

If the system crashes again and a memory dump is created, please follow the instructions provided by your Technical Support Engineer to submit it for analysis, if required.