Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

0xc4 Stop Code Errors

May 29, 2010 12:14AM PDT

I started getting c4 stop codes a while back and have been trying to track down what is causing the conflict. I'm very frustrated now because the couple times I thought I had figured out what the offending driver was turned out not to be the case.
Any suggestions on troubleshooting methods would be greatly appreciated. These are the things I've tried so far:
1. Run verifyer.exe. That was a dud because my computer refused to start and had to safe boot in and disable it.
2. Disable drivers through Services and Autoruns. I thought I was onto something because my computer ran three days without crashing and was going to start re-enabling them one at a time. Not! The pc crashed before I started that process.
I use AppCrash Viewer to look at Window's minidump files but must admit that I didn't get much from that because most of what is in there is a complete mystery to me.
My pc is a Dell Studio XPS 435T. OS is Windows 7 x64. 12 GB of Ram. Video card is an ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series.

Thanks

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Back to dell?
May 29, 2010 12:52AM PDT

That code is something of a sign. Not a good one. Report the failure to dell so you don't run out of warranty later as some device has failed and you bear the full cost of repair.
Bob

- Collapse -
c4 Stop Code
May 29, 2010 3:22AM PDT

I am only on year 1 of a 3yr warranty so not too concerned about that. I will contact Dell but wanted to do some troubleshooting myself before that because if it isn't a hardware issue Dell will likely say it's not their problem. We'll see though. I want to try this though because what I've seen on my internet searches is that the c4 error is usually caused by driver conflicts and I wanted to try and eliminate that possibility so I can argue with Dell. I have to say though that Dell has been very good to deal with so far.
Thanks for the reply.

- Collapse -
Your post didn't tell
May 29, 2010 4:14AM PDT

If you were playing with drivers. I find some get caught up in a never ending search for the best driver and their machines do down in (virtual) flames. If Dell didn't supply good drivers and you are under warranty, have them fix this. If you are playing with drivers, go back to what worked.
Bob

- Collapse -
Remember.
May 29, 2010 4:33AM PDT

Go back to when it worked.

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/stop0x0000004C.htm duplicates the usual advice about stop troubleshooting. The really great thing is I'm finding these to be rare in good machines. I still get hit with them with machines that have heat issues or the owner has been "trying drivers."

Your story may help but for now, roll back to before the troubles.
Bob

- Collapse -
c4 errors
May 30, 2010 12:15AM PDT

Thanks for the replies. I haven't been playing with drivers in the sense of replacing them other than normal manufacter supplied updates. The posts did make me realize though that I had 2 HDDs fail (!) and Dell replaced them A cpouple days after that one of the 2 "new" ones failed and that was replaced. It seems to me that it was around that time that this started so I'll get in touch with Dell.
Once again, thanks to everyone for your advice.

Regards

- Collapse -
Adding that to the story helps me.
May 30, 2010 12:18AM PDT

If this was my machine I'd update my drivers the OLD FASHIONED WAY in this order.

Old fashioned means I find and download them. I never use any UPDATE DRIVER button or tool.

1. Motherboard chipset package.
2. Audio driver.
3. Video driver.
Bob

- Collapse -
0xc4 Errors
May 30, 2010 5:22AM PDT

Thanks. I did the video drivers a three days ago but will do what you suggest.

- Collapse -
c4 Errors
Jun 3, 2010 7:45AM PDT

I think I've traced the device driver conflict to one from Zone Alarm Security Suite. The driver is vsdatant.dll. I removed ZASS from my PC and cleaned the registry. Been 24 hours now without a crash. Pray for me!
Thanks for everyone's advice.

- Collapse -
Ahh
Jun 3, 2010 8:18AM PDT

That's a known not-fun issue with ZA, stacks and ethernet/other drivers. Usually you see something in the BSOD or Event Viewer that leads you to this but I forgot to ask for the event viewer entries.
Bob

- Collapse -
c4 Errors
Jun 3, 2010 12:41PM PDT

That's okay. I realized a few days ago myself that I should be looking at the minidump files. Probably should have gone to the event viewer but minidumps are what I thought about. Although I found 99% of the minidump file gobbledegook I noticed fairly quickly that the file in question showed up every time. I assumed that 2+2=4 and removed ZA.

All the best