Quake, Vista 64bit and the BSODs

I upgrade my Dev box to have 4GB of Ram last week, and was instantly hit by a series of BSODs. They ranged from System_Service_Exceptions to Memory_Exceptions. I initially thought that the RAM was bad so I returned it and got a replacement.

After installing the new RAM I was again hit by the same random BSODs, this obviously raised concerns that my MB was up the creak on one of the RAM slots that I'd now started using. Hoping for the best I dug around in the Application log of Vista and found the following two Side by Side entries:

Activation context generation failed for "C:\Games\Enemy Territory - QUAKE Wars\ServerLauncher.exe".Error in manifest or policy file "" on line . A component version required by the application conflicts with another component version already active. Conflicting components are:. Component 1: C:\Windows\WinSxS\manifests\x86_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.6001.18000_none_5cdbaa5a083979cc.manifest. Component 2: C:\Windows\WinSxS\manifests\amd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.6001.18000_none_152e7382f3bd50c6.manifest.

and

Activation context generation failed for "C:\Games\Enemy Territory - QUAKE Wars\ServerLauncher.exe".Error in manifest or policy file "" on line . A component version required by the application conflicts with another component version already active. Conflicting components are:. Component 1: C:\Windows\WinSxS\manifests\x86_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.6001.18000_none_5cdbaa5a083979cc.manifest. Component 2: C:\Windows\WinSxS\manifests\amd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.6001.18000_none_152e7382f3bd50c6.manifest.

One pained uninstall later and the machine is running beautifully! You can't uninstall in Safe Mode as the service isn't running and won't run under Safe Mode, so I had to try with the BSOD still randomly happening on either start up or during the uninstall.

My only guess is that something in the Quake code is hard coded to expect 32bit sized number, and by adding 2GB on a 64bit platform it could full utilise the extra RAM and started going bang.