February 2009 Archives

I'm using a Thinkpad T43p, and recently the Generic Host Process started to crash after putting the notebook out of standby or hibernate.  This seemed to happen only if the WLAN adapter was enabled.  I'm sure you've seen a similar dialog before as well, but for different reasons.
This dialog is actually pretty useless.  The "click here" link provides some details, but only if I'm in the mood to look at a crash dump.  To me, a hint to look at the Windows Event Log would be more helpful than telling that some information may have been lost.

In the Windows Application Event Log I found the following entry.

Faulting application svchost.exe, version 5.1.2600.5512, faulting module wzcsvc.dll, version 5.1.2600.5512, fault address 0x000337b4.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Now that's something I could work with.  The svchost.exe is the Generic Host Process, and the affected Module is wzcsvc.dll, the Wireless Zero Configuration Service.  I'm using ThinkVantage Access Connections to manage my network settings, which has its own way to configure wireless networking.  I was puzzled to see the Wireless Zero Configuration Service crash, because it shouldn't have been enabled at all.  I think this may have been caused by my recent System Update, which also updated the Intel Wireless.

There are two lessons to take from this.

1. If anything goes wrong, make sure to check the Windows Event Log.
2. If you upgrade your system, immediately check the configuration of the upgraded components.  It's much harder to connect the dots after some time has passed.