Windows Bootup Issues after SVS Agent Install (Part 2 - the Fix!)

A week ago I submitted a Tech Tip about Windows reboot issues after the SVS agent was installed on computers with Symantec AntiVirus and how we were able to disable SVS after the install to make the reboot issues go away.

This week, I found a FIX that lets you keep SVS and AntiVirus working together normally. I thought I would post it for any of you who were using the workaround before like I was.

The fix comes from this Symantec article which was listed in the SVS 2.1 SP2 release notes:

The summary of the cause in the article is:

• This problem occurs because there is a limited amount of kernel space available for kernel drivers. If the operating system runs out of kernel space, then the computer displays a blue screen error message.
• When Symantec AntiVirus File System Realtime Protection or Auto-Protect examines a file for viruses, it requests file access from the corresponding file system. These requests for file IO can add to kernel stack consumption.
• To prevent File System Realtime Protection or Auto-Protect from using additional kernel stack in a low stack situation, an internal configuration value named KStackMinFree was added and is configurable through the Windows registry.

So, as the article explains, we pushed out the registry change and restarted the Symantec AntiVirus service to computers that were previously stuck in a reboot loop, or were rebooting an extra time after a BSOD. It worked beautifully.

Sadly, I had to run across this on my own and the technician at Symantec support did not provide this info for me. His first suggestion was to disable the File System Auto Protect startup (which is the last suggestion that this Symantec article makes). Thankfully, we did not have to modify our AntiVirus configuration settings across all computers, and can instead push out this quick fix to any computers that experience a conflict.

As a side note, the upgrade to SVS 2.1 SP2 did not resolve the SVS / AntiVirus conflict as I had hoped, so I had to use the fix.

Best Regards,
George