Null Pointers

It has been almost a year and a half since I first experienced a STOP 0x0000C1F5 on Vista and discovered a workaround for the problem (see my original post on the topic here).  Since that time, I have received tens of thousands of page hits, hundreds of comments, countless side conversations, and even a few donations as a result.

Several people contacted me to inform me that there is FINALLY a fix available from Microsoft for this problem.  It seems that the Windows 7 beta disc (and, of course, the Windows 7 RTM disc) includes a “silent fix” for this issue.  Apparently, when you boot a Windows 7 disc and it is identifying potential partitions for installation, it silently fixes any problems with $TxfLog that it finds… so if you boot it to the “Install Now” prompt, abort the installation, remove the disc, and simply boot Vista off your hard drive, it should fix itself.  This is described in KB970101.

Last night, I did something stupid on my primary desktop computer (a Vista box) and needed to restore the system to a recent backup. I use Windows Home Server on my home network, so I was confident in my ability to roll back the system to a previous night's backup. I booted my machine using the WHS Client Restore CD, chose the appropriate backup, waited (im)patiently for about two hours while the bits were restored, the system rebooted...

...and that's when I saw the Blue Screen of Death... specifically, a STOP 0x0000C1F5. Crap.

Now, my first instinct was that I had a sketchy backup image in WHS, and perhaps I should try a slightly older one. I repeated the restore process with three older backups and got the same result. On the verge of going off on a major "WHS sucks" tirade, I instead opted for some Googling on a still-working system to see if I could find any clues. It seems as though the frequency of reports of STOP 0x0000C1F5 problems is increasing, with most people attributing the issue to a bad Vista SP1 (or prepare-for-SP1) update or patch. Microsoft acknowledges the problem in KB946084, but there is no public hotfix or workaround save for "clear the MBR and reinstall", which IMHO is unacceptable.