Bad pool Header BSOD?

[AceEvo55]

Hey guys,
As the title states, I've encountered a blue screen of death. It hit me while I was playing skyrim, so that was unfortunate.

The error says: BAD_POOL_HEADER, and I've attempted to resolve this by googling. Unfortunately, this has only provided one solution: pc refresh.

Now, I realize that perhaps that is my only option. However, I thought I would ask you lovely and knowledgeable ladies and gentlemen if you had any advice.

I will post dump files later tonight, but in the meantime, any advice is appreciated.

Also, worst case, if I do have to refresh, I hear it's a huge pain reinstalling everything. Any tips (aside from mass backups that will probably lead to incredible redundancy) for managing the process? My steam games and ensuring that I don't have to redownload them all are of particular concern!

Thanks in advance, Ace

 

[Mark McDonut]

what are you running for antivirus?

Also, you may want to run a memory (RAM) diagnostic from your BIOS or if it's a branded computer, it should be in the OEM repair menu or can be booted from an OEM recovery cd.

this issue seems to happen with corrupt antivirus (since antivirus themselves do funky stuff with RAM) or a bad RAM stick altogether.

 

[AceEvo55]

what are you running for antivirus?

Also, you may want to run a memory (RAM) diagnostic from your BIOS or if it's a branded computer, it should be in the OEM repair menu or can be booted from an OEM recovery cd.

this issue seems to happen with corrupt antivirus (since antivirus themselves do funky stuff with RAM) or a bad RAM stick altogether.

I'm using Avast and have been for probably about a year and a half with no change. Attempting to solve this issue I also downloaded Anti-Malware Bytes today (I saw someone commented somewhere that malware was their issue). Problem literally popped up over night. If the antivirus is the case, would just uninstalling it fix the issue?

Also, I used Win 8.1's built in memory test and it returned no errors. I suspected RAM too, but that seems to rule out the possibility.

Thanks for the quick reply,
Ace

 

[Mark McDonut]

Hmm, What I would do to try narrowing it down would be to uninstall and reinstall your antivirus in the event that it's broken and causing issues, then update it.

You said it happened during playing skyrim, has it occurred in any other instances you can reproduce? certain timeframe/events?

 

[AceEvo55]

Hmm, What I would do to try narrowing it down would be to uninstall and reinstall your antivirus in the event that it's broken and causing issues, then update it.

You said it happened during playing skyrim, has it occurred in any other instances you can reproduce? certain timeframe/events?

It never occurs expectedly, it's rather random and entirely unscheduled. Although looking at the dump files, which I hope to upload as soon as I get home, it happens in every 30ish minutes about three times, and then disappears for a few hours. I will get rid of Avast and try reproducing the crash.

Thank you for your help!

As a side note, and this may be a regular thing that I've just never noticed, but my (for lack of a better word) "thinking light" on my computer is on. The one that blinks when it's doing something. I apologize for how unclear that is, "thinking light" is the term I used as a child and never learnt the proper name for it.
Anyway, that light is behaving very strangely (again, maybe it does this all the time, I've never noticed), it blinks very rapidly and then stays on, and then blinks again very rapidly. It never stays off for more than a moment or two, and I'm just browsing the Internet.

I'll remove Avast and see what happens!
Thanks,
Ace

 

[AceEvo55]

Posting rather than editing to ensure that this is seen. The issue appears to be solved after reinstalling Avast.

Thanks Mark for your assistance!

I ask that this thread remain open for 24 hours despite it's solved nature as my problem is rather sporadic and may reappear.

 

[Mark McDonut]

no problem man, glad to help, the only other thing i was thinking is check for any .sys files being referenced in your crash dumps, could be an outdated driver like an audio driver or something that may be incompatible with current windows updates and may need an update of its own. you can usually google the file name and see what it goes to then check windows device manager and see what driver version you have installed by right clicking the device. you can usually get updates at your manufacturers website if you search for your computer model and version of windows.

I lost my onboard wifi adapter when i installed some windows 8.1 updates a while back and updating the bios fixed it, just goes to show how things can conflict sometimes.