RDP rdpdr.sys causes Win XP BSOD on accessing shared drive

[lm713]

Great work borhani!

I'm sorry I was useless! The first night I didn't have time to try and the second (last night) I forgot to bring my laptop so I would have been unable to test!

Anyway, thank you pk and borhani. I'm sure there will be many more very grateful people to find this thread.

Here are some more keywords to help the search: Windows XP restarts automatically (or Blue Screen / stop error beginning "0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0x00000000") on copy or cut of files when logged in via Remote Desktop (RDP) and the Local Resources clipboard or drives are shared in the session and the operation involves accessing one of these. Note that if Clipboard sharing is enabled, cutting or copying any file on the remote desktop will trigger the error (regardless of whether you are moving/copying it to a local drive) - presumably the driver is used to make a note of the location of the data in case you want to paste it onto your local desktop, and this triggers the error.

Note: this error does not appear to depend on the OS of the client (the computer logging into the windows XP computer) and is not exclusive to systems running AVAST, but the bug in rdpdr.sys is the same and so is the solution, courtesy of pk and borhani.

Would be nice if MS just allowed XP on the Hotfix (since it works for XP).

Thanks again!

[lm713]

I have posted feedback on the KB article to ask MS to release the Hotfix for WinXP. Worth a shot.

[borhani]

I think MS is trying really hard to ignore XP. They want it to go away. It's a shame, because each new OS version brings very little gain, and often a lot of useless junk, IMHO.

[lm713]

As I mentioned, I use Vista (on the laptop I remote desktop into XP) and it is a nightmare. I practically do nothing on it other than rd and browse the web, yet it's managed to get completely clogged up (running out of drive space on C), and even more annoyingly the hdd goes crazy every now and again, the system grinding to a halt - forget about even streaming anything. The HDD itself is fine. It's usually some svchost.exe process or similar, apparently deciding to defrag the hard drive or something at random!

Automatic Updates on XP used to cause me a similar headache when it would periodically evaluate the system for updates, causing the system to halt for a few minutes. The only solution was to disable the Automatic Updates service and run it on my time. (Fully automatic updating, which apparently runs at a time specified by you, e.g. 3 am, was not an option for me because it would download and install updates for Office components I don't even have installed - yes that is MS logic for you.) At least on XP you can easily delete the update uninstallers and download backups (I'm not sure why it doesn't at least remove these itself). My conspiracy theory is that MS clogs up systems on purpose so that users feel they need to upgrade. But I was able to watch video fine in 2004, and before, so why not now? I'm not playing the latest computer games or anything like that.

Apologies for my ranting.

I think I will eventually upgrade to Win7. I've heard it's much better than Vista. 8 apparently is not being recommended to businesses by the big IT consultancy firms (not worth the effort they say).

[borhani]

I have Win7 at work. It "looks" cuter than XP, but it's not better, and in some ways worse. As Steve Jobs said, "They just don't get it." MS tries to add cute features without fixing underlying bugs & annoyances (such as overall sluggishness, file explorer doesn't update automatically, "Recent Places" often doesn't show the most obvious things (like that file I was just editing).

One thing that I found helped a lot was to get a non-MS disk defragmenter. I picked Auslogic's (free) program: very, very easy to use, fast, and does (AFAI can tell) a great job. One option is to "optimize" the disk, i.e. placing key system files in the most quickly accessed parts of the disk. Lastly, fix the swap file at a fixed, reasonable size. Mine is currently fixed at 4 GB (I have only 2 GB of RAM, the most my motherboard can take). Unless you're doing something like editing video, 2+4 should be much more than enough. Hope this helps!

[lm713]

Thank you for that. I will definitely give it a try. I currently have a separate partition for a reasonably large swap, imitating the Linux style, but (coincidentally because of this BSOD) I discovered that's not always a good thing: if you don't have one on C, you won't get error mini dumps. Now that I have recovered a lot of space on C that is not a problem.

Hmmm I am leaning more and more towards the dark side of Mac. Apparently everything just works on Mac. I'm not sure I like Mac (and its culture), I'm just fed up of Windows. The problem is my most crucial program (an IDE) is Windows-only and I'm not sure I can rely on a windows emulator, api, or whatever else they are called. I should be moving over to Linux, I just don't have the time to learn (and again same issue with the IDE).

One thing is certain: I need hardware upgrades. My XP box is 2004 and laptop circum 2006. I'm not keen on upgrades for the sake of upgrades, but I am keen on the idea of programs (and OS) loading in light speed off a SSD

Thanks again for all your help!

[borhani]

Hi lm713, I'm wondering if you gave this a try yet? It was working for me well, but recently (last 2 days), I've been getting a new, serious error:
STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error} The Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0x00000502 (0x000000, 0x000000). The system has been shut down.


The Windows troubleshooting for this error is not very helpful (driver changes, etc.).
I turned on Dr.Watson (as MS suggests). It writes two binary dump files, one ~1 MB, the other ~18 MB. Does anyone know how to read these, make sense of their content??
 --- and get this... as soon as you click OK to the message about the winlogon error, the dump files are deleted! (If they're moved somewhere I cannot find them...not in C:\D&S\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Dr. Watson folder).

I've been installing software in the past week, since finally getting Avast!/RDP to work together --- iTunes, Carbonite, POVray, and a few other (small) odds and ends, but I cannot track down what is causing the issue. The only program that so messes with the system to cause this kind of error is, I think, Carbonite, so I might roll back to a restore point just before I installed it.

But, wondering if it's all this other s/w, or perhaps some strange incompatibility of the Win Server 2003 rdpdr.sys...

[doc_jochim]

Hello,

I've got the same, reproducible Problem accessing Win7pro64bit's HD c: or any connected USB-Stick from within virtual XP-Mode or trying to copy files from Win7's desktop to XP-Mode's file-system (or vice versa): Immediate BSOD (same as yours) and restart.

I opened a support ticket and got the following answer today:

so it is during Remote access/session? Then it is known issue that should be solved in the next avast release that should be during this autumn.

Best regards,

Avast Software a.s. 2nd level support team

André (hoping for an earlier release of a specific hotfix by Avast)

[borhani]

My RDP error per se was fixed by the method outlined above.

Now, I just have the occasional (sometimes very occasional, like 3 times in a row!) winlogon.exe error, but ONLY as administrator.  After I deleted the administrator's profile, and WinXP created a fresh profile, it worked fine for several days...until it didn't! At this point, it seems like a 50:50 chance every time I log in as administrator (e.g., to do a system security update) whether it will crash. It's also irreproducible as to timing: sometimes the crash is just after logging in, sometimes several minutes after logging in, and sometimes even as the (administrator only!) password is being typed (this last one is really strange, I admit, but it has happened two or three times!).  BUT, as far as RDP goes, this winlogon issue is not connected (AFAI can tell): it happens occasionally during direct connection logins as well.

[prideaux]

Slightly different environment here, but same symptoms and error messages (Just posting in case anyone is in the same boat).

I am running a virtual machine (guest XP SP3, host Windows 7). Avast is running in the XP guest, not in the host. Exactly the same unexpected crash when performing operations with Windows File Explorer. This only started to happen when i upgraded from Avast 7 to Avast 8. I have been running Avast 7 for at least one year with no problems.

The microsoft driver may be faulty, but it worked well with AVAST 7; whatever AVAST has changed from their version 7 to version 8 is the root cause. My solution was not to update the rdpdr.sys from the Win2003 Server hotfix (too many steps to bother with), but to uninstall Avast 8 and revert back to AVAST version 7. 

As long as the Virus definitions are up to date, it does not bother me that i have an older program version. Here's hoping avast does not stop supporting version 7, or when they do, they will have FIXED THEIR VERSION 8 to work work in harmony with Windows XP's rdpdr.sys (just like version 7 does !)

[Boss_429]

We are now running Engine 8.0.1490 but still experiancing this issue.

AVAST, please provide an update!! 

[cyborgen]

What a pain !!

I just removed Avast from my XP server and the problem is solved.

Waiting for an Avast update. There is no way I'm going to tamper with windows internal security.