Terminated whilst holding Mutex

[ErnieK]

WinXP

Can anyone tell me in (very) simple terms what this means.
Kernal thread terminated whilst holding mutex

This has started happening over the last 12 hours.

Yesterday I formated with InCD 5 new CD-RW disks ready for use today. Computer was running OK before and after.

Today, when I insert one of these disks into the cd-drive InCD opens up saying that I can use the disk like a floppy and that it is formatted with "InCD UDF format" The disk then opens without any bother, showing an empty screen as it should.

Whenever I insert any one of these disks and try to copy something to it I recieve an error saying "Cannot copy [file name]" when I click on Ok for this, the above error happens every time. It makes no difference what type or size this file can be. (anything from a shortcut to a 30MB file)

I have tried re-formatting the disks with InCd and the computer crashes with the following error. 00a8-000-002c-0000

I have tried using Nero (5.5.42) to erase the UDF file system to no avail. I cannot get rid of the UDF format.

I have un-installed Incd and reinstalled it to no avail. I have even doen a reg search for all things rlelated to InCd.

I can accept one disk being bad but not five.

CD-RW drive has been used successfully using Nero today using another disk from the same multi-pack. Tonight when I tried once again to use Nero (after the above started to happen) I recieved the following error Session fixation error ---Could not perform fixation
:confused: :( HELP

Computer is working Ok with everything else.

[Paul Komski]

If you follow the sequence for fixation error (http://www.nero.com/en/helptool/530.htm) then it looks like it could be speed or heat of burning or a failing power supply.

Mutex definition (http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid7_gci214353,00.html)

[ErnieK]

Thanks Paul
I am following your links now

[Paul Komski]

Did some homework this morning.

Threads (similar-to and developed-from processes) allow applications to perform multiple ops simultaneously. If two threads are created and started, they will operate in parallel. The operating system then decides when each thread gets time to execute. The application does not have to handle the task of splitting execution time between the code.

In multithreaded programs two or more threads may be accessing or manipulating the same object or data. It is important to be able to avoid the problem where one thread is manipulating the data but is stopped in the middle of the execution by the operating system in order to start-up another thread that happens to be reading the same data that the other thread was writing. What happens is that the reading thread gets the data in a half-written state.

This major error is usually avoided through the use of mutexes. A mutex allows protection of a section of code. Each thread attempting to access the code must lock the mutex. Only one thread may have the mutex locked at any one time. Any other threads attempting to lock the mutex will block until the mutex is unlocked.

If a kernel thread is terminated whilst holding mutex my simple understanding is that either there was conflict, corruption or a simple time-out and all that application's threads would fail, being unable to access the code held by the one that locked access to the code by locking the mutex. Bad programming could also lead to this error, but unlikely in this case since things had been OK previously.

That's my best shot at understanding for now - someone else may be able to explain it better or more simply. I have learned that getting properly to grips with the hardware/software interface is where true understanding of PCs emanates from. It's a big project but is where most of my energies are currenly aimed.

Your problem could be faulty application software (unlikely since you reinstalled), faulty OS (????) but most likely to be faulty hardware (burner, power, media) or hardware settings - IMHO. Is there any chance of replacing any of the hardware items - one by one?

[ErnieK]

Paul
After following your links and a lot (oh my poor eyes) of reading I found that it could be the CD-Drive itself at fault (Overheating of the drive was one of the possible faults).

So I removed the existing drive and installed old CD-RW drive and things are back to normal. Trouble using the old drive but this just because the drive has trouble reading the (any) disk, Just keep re-inserting the disk and it eventually finds it and work without problems.

Hopefully that is the probelm fixed. I will give it a few days just to check though. I have just under 2GB of stuff to write (going onto 5-6 different disks) over so this will test out old drive and system stabillity.

Will be returning the newer drive as it is not that old.