Windows 8.1 BSOD: netwlv64.sys

Hi,

As there is no driver provided by Intel yet, it may be in your best interest to remain on Windows 8 until an 8.1 driver is released.

Regards,

Patrick

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for good advise. But there is also no driver for Windows 8 which is basically why I initially avoided it - along with many other critical bugs and bluescreens. For example when my HP 8510w is on battery and LAN is connected on my Intel 82566MM network card then Windows freezes every couple of seconds for a while. It's impossible to use the machine like this.
A work-around was posted here. But still no working driver either from Microsoft nor from Intel.

Windows 8.1 seems to make things worse even according to forum discussions I found when looking for a solution.

The work-around to disable Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) in the registry at "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\VEN_8086&DEV...<your-device-id>\Device Parameters\Interrupt Management\MessageSignalInterruptProperties\MSISupported=0" did the trick for me on the LAN adapter. Right now I am trying whether occasional bluescreens on WLAN can be avoided disabling MSI on WLAN interface driver too.

However to me it looks like there is something seriously broken either in driver compatibility on kernel interfaces or the kernel itself. Moreover the drivers I am using are provided by Microsoft which should actually know how these interfaces work to avoid kernel exceptions which result in STOP error. The fact that not even Microsoft manages to do it right does not add a lot of confidence in Windows 8(.1) stability.

Perhaps I am better of staying with Windows 7 and also proposing this to all customers. Or directly go for some stable OS.

That's incredibly unfortunate, but it may just be the best solution for your situation.

Regards,

Patrick

That's incredibly unfortunate, but it may just be the best solution for your situation.

LOL; you might also just write "I don't care".
Well for me it's becoming more clear now into which direction the future of Microsoft points and what the consequences for me and my customers are. Perhaps somebody else might still come up with some magic solution or Microsoft fixes the issue with an update. Still hoping for it.

Rainer,

There's something you need to understand. I am on five different communities in regards to assisting users with solving their BSOD related issues. I have solved thousands of BSOD issues and I have achieved many things here, even MCC, in a short amount of time. I have respect from many important people because of how hard I work to ensure a user has their issues solved, and to teach them at the same time.

In your situation though, you said it all. On Windows 8 and 8.1, there is not yet a driver that you can use that doesn't require some sort of out-of-the-way modification via the registry to make it work, and even then, it's barely working and you still crash. There is very little that I can do at that point to assist you because, well, I can't code drivers. If I could? I'd code you a driver. But I can't. I just do what I can in regards to analysis and point you in the right direction.

The most I can advise is you truly ensure all of your network drivers are up to date. If they are and you are still having issues because there's no 8 and 8.1 driver? Not much you can do, it's on Intel or Microsoft to go ahead and publish 8.1 ready drivers for your system (more than likely the former). I would imagine if anything, Microsoft releases some sort of update or hotfix to try and ensure compatibility between a 7 driver temporarily.

Regards,

Patrick

Hi Patrick

Thanks for your reply. I do fully understand that you can't fix it yourself. I was more in the hope of some reply which involves a "magic switch", registry setting boot setting (tried also to disable dynamic ticks at no avail) to fix the driver since I was quite surprised that the default driver obviously coded by Microsoft is causing BSOD. And the fact that both network interfaces on my HP 8510w mobile workstation are causing Windows 8.1 to freeze makes me believe that there might be serious issues with Windows 8.1 network stack or driver interfaces rather than just being a single case. Searching the internet for solutions brings up a lot of results of people having the same kind of problems on various hardware.

To say it clearly. I really appreciate your reply and I am sure you deserve a good reputation for helping users fixing BSOD and similar issues. I am supporting many Windows installations as well and resolved hundreds of BSOD, KSOD, crashes etc as well.

This issue here is just pretty frustrating for me as there is no alternative driver available and the one from MICROSOFT which I usually expect not to support the latest-and-greatest feature but I expect it at least not to crash the kernel. Obviously I am wrong and perhaps there is no way to program a stable driver for this (and many other) hardware on Windows 8.1.

Probably it appeared to be rude to say you could have said "I don't care". But I added the "LOL" tag on purpose. You perhaps care very much but obviously it's not really a solution just pointing out to roll back all my systems to Windows 7 and it does not build trust in Microsoft having to follow this approach.

Therefore I apologize if I have been rude or you felt offended due to my reply.
I am not upset with you at all. You tried to help. I am rather upset with Microsoft and the quality of Windows 8.1.

Meanwhile I have disabled MSI for the WiFi interface and since this change I did not yet run into BSOD (still keeping 802.11n mode disabled). So this might be a work-around to try for people running into the same issue (freezing Windows, BSOD).

Understandable. I would provide more solutions without second thought if I had them, alas I do not given this is unfortunately as we've discussed related to a driver needing to be very badly published. It's great to hear you've hopefully found out a temporary workaround by disabling the MSI Wifi Interface. Keep me updated on whether or not this ends up solving your issue.

In the meantime, I will attempt to research and possibly find some solutions. No guarantees as again, this is unfortunately all on the fault of a driver and there is only so much to 'work around', if you will.

Regards,

Patrick

Just a small update: My Windows 8.1 pro again crashed with BSOD on netwlv64.sys. It was running fine now for about 4 hours at least. Although I am not used any more to such unstable OS I have to say. So unless I find another magic switches or fixes I might sadly have to switch to another OS.

Hi,

I have done a bit of of research on the Intel web page and found that Intel seems to have dropped support for 4965AGN WiFi chipset somewhere between version 15.3.1 and 15.3.50 releases made on the same day. All following driver versions do not support this chipset.

So I have installed version 15.3.1 now and my device manager now shows:

Driver Provider: Intel
Driver Date: 07.10.2010
Driver Version: 13.4.0.139

Interestingly the data matches the one from the "Microsoft" driver quite well. I guess the Microsoft driver is just based on Intel 13.3 edition drivers released a couple of months earlier.

What I could test already is that also with the Intel 13.4.0.139 driver the card won't re-connect to wifi after standby resume. This time I just disabled MSI in the registry for this device rather than disabling 802.11n mode in device properties. It seems to fix the resume issue for me on the Intel 13.3.0.139 driver:

-----
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_4229&SUBSYS_11018086&REV_61\4&34ad53c6&0&00E1\Device Parameters\Interrupt Management\MessageSignaledInterruptProperties]
"MSISupported"=dword:00000000
-----


NOTE: You might have to adapt the device identifier (VEN_8086&DEV_4229&SUBSYS...) according to your hardware.

Though I have little hope that the driver will run stable for hours as it seems to behave exactly like the Microsoft driver (which is likely just re-branded Intel driver too).

I still wonder why the WiFi driver which was working fine with Windows Vista, 7 and even 8(.0) can crash the Windows 8.1 kernel so badly.


Update: I still had to disable 802.11n mode as standby resume issue was not fixed by just disabling MSI. I suspect this time it just took longer for Windows to notice that connection is actually lost after wakeup. This time the driver behaves quite randomly. Even with 802.11n mode disabled it sometimes does not return from standby and is unable to connect to any network after resume. The only way to revive it is to reboot or disable/enable the device.