STOP Error 0x0000008E

This topic is something that came through our forum and has made it to the top of our list of most searched for terms in January. The thread that started this can be found here.

There are two documents on Microsoft's site that cover this. here and here.

The first one is a debugging issue that was fixed with Xp SP1. The second document covers a hardware acceleration issue which was fixed in SP2.

More common than either of the issues covered by Microsoft is going to be hardware problems. Most common is overclocking and heat related. A moderator of our forum (MikeBlane) has this to say about general troubleshooting of STOP messages.

If you can?t find a specific reference to your problem, running through the following checklist stands a good chance of resolving the problem for you. This checklist is also usually the best approach to troubleshooting some specific Stop messages, such as 0x0A and 0x50.
1. Examine the ?System? and ?Application? logs in Event Viewer for other recent errors that might give further clues. To do this, launch EventVwr.msc from a Run box; or open ?Administrative Tools? in the Control Panel then launch Event Viewer.
2. If you?ve recently added new hardware, remove it and retest.
3. Run hardware diagnostics supplied by the manufacturer.
4. Make sure device drivers and system BIOS are up-to-date.
5. However, if you?ve installed new drivers just before the problem appeared, try rolling them back to the older ones.
6. Open the box and make sure all hardware is correctly installed, well seated, and solidly connected.
7. Confirm that all of your hardware is on the Hardware Compatibility List. If some of it isn?t, then pay particular attention to the non-HCL hardware in your troubleshooting.
8. Check for viruses.
9. Investigate recently added software.
10. Examine (and try disabling) BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing.

0x0000008E: means KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
0x00000005: means INVALID_PROCESS_ATTACH_ATTEMPT

ALWAYS make sure you check your RAM timings in the BIOS and set them lower if you're having any issues. For more information on memory timings check this article out.

If you would like to read more about end user experiences with this error check this thread in the forum.