BSOD: Stop 0×0000007e CPQDTCT.SYS on HP Compaq dc7900 sff

Hi guys, long time no see … I’m back with some news for owners of HP Compaq dc7900 sff machines (obviously) who may experience BSOD under certain conditions (generally during logon phase, or at logon screen).

After experiencing this crash on a dozen of machines and analyzing the minidumps, I figured out that the crash was caused by a nasty service installed on the comps which is called CpqDtct (The CpqDtct.sys file is HP Compaq Client Management Driver). Various attempts to remove the service/file were unsuccessful, and I couldn’t afford to lose any minute (since the issue happened in production environment, during deployment).

Here are the steps taken to disable the nasty little service :

• From a remote computer, access the faulty machine registry through regedit.exe
• Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\CpqDtct
• Delete all values and subkeys (but not the CpqDtct key itself)
• modify permissions on CpqDtct key to DENY ALL (Permissions / Advanced / Untick Inherit Permissions / Click on Remove / OK / OK)
• Repeat operation with all other ControlSetXXX keys

Enjoy!

I hate Acer and I want (them) to die!

I hate Acer and I want them to die, that should have been the right title of Nirvana’s hit. My unfaithful, twisted Acer Aspire 3104 WLMi, already famous for it’s overheating issues and semi-USB failures (one port out of three not working, only one port running at full USB 2.0, problems with the internal webcam) decided to die this weekend, just 3 days before ADSL will be installed at my apartment.

All USB ports are dead, the keyboard and touchpad as well, despite all my attempts to resurrect this carcass.
Plugging an external keyboard / mouse also proved to be useless.

I’m now stuck in Acer Hell waiting for a reply from their tech support, and also for warranty info from my reseller (I bought it in August 2007, speak about reliability!)