I've been having problems getting ColdFusion 8 installed on my laptop for months now. No matter how I tried installing it (stand alone, multi-server, j2ee), it caused my computer to Blue Screen during the install process. Everything would go ok right up until I launched the ColdFusion Administrator to complete the install process. After launching the CF Administrator, the computer would continue on for between 1 and 30 seconds before it would blue screen with a BAD_POOL_HEADER error.
I know others are having the problem as well as a Google search turns up several others with the problem but no satisfactory solution.
After a lot of off and on troubleshooting, I finally had a chance to sit down over the past two days and have figured out what the problem is and have come up with a workaround. It turns out that the issue is the JVM. More specifically, Java 6 (and on my machine Java 5 as well) causes the problem. I can cause the BSOD with Java 6 using both ColdFusion 8 and JBoss (without ColdFusion).
Since the ColdFusion 8 installer lays down the 1.6.0_01 jvm, you need a way to install ColdFusion 8 with an earlier jvm. Here's the workaround I've come up with. In my case, I chose to use the 1.4.2_14 version of the jdk:
- Go through the entire CF install (doesn't matter which server method). However, don't launch the CF Administrator to complete the install. If you do this, you'll BSOD.
- Download an older version of the Sun JDK. I happened to test with 1.4.2_14, which seems to be working for me. When I get time, I may test with earlier versions of 1.5, but the latest 1.5 still caused BSOD for me.
- Install the JDK. you may have to reboot.
- Open the jvm.config file (c:\jrun4\bin) and change java.home to point to the JDK you just installed. This will tell cf to use that jvm instead of the 1.6.0_01 version that installs with cf 8.
- Start all CF services. If any are already started, restart them.
- Open the CF Admin to complete the install process. It should complete without error, and without any BSOD.
At this point, you should be good to go. I should point out that the BSOD problem is most likely a problem with Java 6 and either my video card, or my NIC. I have an IBM T60 with an Intel Nic. Others in my office have the same laptop and nic, but aren't having the BSOD problem. They do, however have a different video card than I do (I have an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400). IBM OEM's the card in my case, so any resolution is going to have to come from them on my end. I have no idea if they will ever resolve the issue, so all I can do is continue to test new JVM versions with my setup as they come out to see if the problem has been resolved.
