Wednesday, May 23, 2007

XPe tip #39: Prevent BSOD from locking device

There was a topic we have covered in the newsgroup long time ago I thought I'd want to have listed here as a tip.

We are all familiar with XP famous BSOD - blue screen of death - a stop error displayed after encountering a critical system error. BSOD on 2K/XP is basically first chance exception within the kernel space (the kernel code or a kernel driver) that the system cannot recover and therefore has to shutdown the system. Instead they first show the exception info and, if set up properly, dumping the memory to a crash dump file.

How to prevent the system from showing BSOD? That may be important on an embedded device that is setup to be headless or does not require user interaction during normal hours of operation.

Only way to do that I know of is by setting the following registry entry:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl],"AutoReboot"=dword:1
that is mapped to XP's Control Panel/System/Advanced/Settings (Startup & Recovery)/System Failure/Check-Automatically Restart GUI element.

This registry value belongs to "Computer Prototype" component and in TD can be set (modified) under HAL (PC) component registry data section (e.g., "Standard PC" or "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI)").

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed your post,. I have been wondering about this topic,so thanks for posting. I’ll likely be coming back to your blog.
Video AC Milan|Video Sepak Bola|How To Make a Kite|How to make a origami|Tips for lossing weight|How to six pack abs