14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has confirmed issues in which some customers running Windows 7 Service Pack 1 have come across incorrect memory dump files on their machines.
The problem also impacts Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 in addition to Windows 7 SP1, but only the 64-bit versions of the operating system when running on x64 Intel processors.
In addition, users need to be running either of the two platforms in the context of also leveraging the XState feature, the software giant informed.
In the scenario detailed above, customers can have a memory dump file generated on the computer. “A memory dump file is generated when the system crashes and a Stop error occurs,” the Redmond company notes.
Users that turned to WinDbg command in order to open the memory dump file have found that the processor context is displayed incorrectly.
“Additionally, you receive the following error message: The context is partially valid. Only x86 user-mode context is available. The wow64exts extension must be loaded to access 32-bit state. .load wow64exts will do this if you haven't loaded it already,” Microsoft said.
According to the Redmond company “this issue occurs because the dump generation logic saves the processor context to the dump file incorrectly on a computer that has the XState feature enabled.”
Microsoft already has a hotfix in place designed to resolve this particular issue, but only this. Customers must be running Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 in the context detailed above in order to apply the hotfix.
Of course, customers affected are running Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and leveraging Intel AVX.
“Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) is a 256-bit SIMD floating-point vector extension of Intel architecture. It includes extensions to both instruction and register sets,” the software giant explained.
“Microsoft has developed some API enhancements, such as XState functions, that enable applications to access and manipulate extended processor feature information and state, including AVX.”