Ted writes:

<<my machine has crashed 124 times due to the following:
SPOOL32 caused an invalid page fault >>

At what stage of bootup does this occur?  If it is after Desktop appears,
then Spool32 may be getting loaded by one of your startup programs.

Run msconfig and uncheck everything. Then reboot and see if the error has
gone.  Add each program back one at a time until you find the culprit.

Look particularly for any startup progs that may want to (unnecessarily)
load your printer--word processors perhaps.

You didn't say whether it happens every time or only occasionally at
bootup, so may be difficult to locate if it is only intermittent.

Run C:/bootlog.txt and see if this sheds any light on which stage of bootup
the fault is occurring.  Look for a line which reads something like
"Deviceinit=Spooler". See if it reports success or failure at this
point.  I'm only guessing that this line loads Spooler.exe.  There should
also be a line further down "Initcomplete=Spooler".  If failures are
reported at either of these points, someone may be able to enlighten us
further.

Have you tried a registry restoration?  You'd have to go back to a time
before this prob started.

When it "crashes" can you still close via Alt/Ctrl/Del?  If not, I imagine
124 power-offs will have corrupted your registry somewhat by now and you
probably have a very unstable system. These errors have a tendency to
compound on themselves if not nipped smartly in the bud.

Another test (which will help eliminate some possibilities) is to boot into
Safe mode and see if the error is still there (you should always do this
anyway after any fatal crash, in order to clear the system. Don't rely on
Scandisk to fix everything).

  If Safe Mode is always OK, that also points strongly to a startup prog
being the cause of the problem.  If Safe still produces the error, then the
cause is much deeper, which a registry restore or Windows reinstall may fix.

Don Penlington




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