Hi all,
I'm new to EasyBCD, great program, although for now I'm not using it.
This is because of a strange thing I'm experiencing at the moment, I'm not using Windows
10 (or its loader) at all, I use my two XP systems more often anyway, so it's OK for now.
I had been seeing quite a few crashes in XP, not in the OS itself, but in some of the running programs.
For example, avast anti-virus, Mozilla Firefox and Tmpgenc mpeg encoder. They would normally crash
right after starting, or within 10 seconds or so. The anti-virus produced a bunch of dump files (*.mdmp)
in its log folder which I have retained. Firefox submitted it's crashes to Mozilla and can be viewed on their
site.
This situation came about after installing a newer motherbard and CPU. Doing a repair on XP has not
solved the problem. This crashing only occurs if I use the Windows 10 boot manager to boot to XP.
As an experiment I used the XP recovery console (fixboot) which restored XP's boot loader and the
problems have stopped. XP works OK if booted from its native loader.
I have a theory, but first some facts. The new CPU supports the Advanced Vector Extensions instruction
set, but Windows XP does not. If any of these instructions are executed in XP, the program will crash
Advanced Vector Extensions - Wikipedia
Secondly, Firefox and those other programs would have some code to determine the environment it was
in before deciding it was safe to use.
My theory is that somehow, using the Win 10 boot loader to boot XP leaves something in the system
that causes the above code check to fail. I'm not a Windows programmer, so I am unable to get to the details
of this, but looking at it from a higher level, this is what it seems to be.
Thanks for reading, apologies if I have made anybody's eyes glaze over. If any one has some thoughts, or an
alternate theory, I'd appreciate it
I'm new to EasyBCD, great program, although for now I'm not using it.
This is because of a strange thing I'm experiencing at the moment, I'm not using Windows
10 (or its loader) at all, I use my two XP systems more often anyway, so it's OK for now.
I had been seeing quite a few crashes in XP, not in the OS itself, but in some of the running programs.
For example, avast anti-virus, Mozilla Firefox and Tmpgenc mpeg encoder. They would normally crash
right after starting, or within 10 seconds or so. The anti-virus produced a bunch of dump files (*.mdmp)
in its log folder which I have retained. Firefox submitted it's crashes to Mozilla and can be viewed on their
site.
This situation came about after installing a newer motherbard and CPU. Doing a repair on XP has not
solved the problem. This crashing only occurs if I use the Windows 10 boot manager to boot to XP.
As an experiment I used the XP recovery console (fixboot) which restored XP's boot loader and the
problems have stopped. XP works OK if booted from its native loader.
I have a theory, but first some facts. The new CPU supports the Advanced Vector Extensions instruction
set, but Windows XP does not. If any of these instructions are executed in XP, the program will crash
Advanced Vector Extensions - Wikipedia
Secondly, Firefox and those other programs would have some code to determine the environment it was
in before deciding it was safe to use.
My theory is that somehow, using the Win 10 boot loader to boot XP leaves something in the system
that causes the above code check to fail. I'm not a Windows programmer, so I am unable to get to the details
of this, but looking at it from a higher level, this is what it seems to be.
Thanks for reading, apologies if I have made anybody's eyes glaze over. If any one has some thoughts, or an
alternate theory, I'd appreciate it