Status: Resolved
Recently I came across two very similar STOP 0xF4 cases, sent to me by ConfigMgr colleagues. When examining the dump, it became clear there was a problem with services.exe. In one dump it was still present while exiting, in the other dump it was already gone. The error code was the same: 14001, 0x36b1 in hex. Some details of the dumps:
FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: X64_0xF4_36b1_IMAGE_wininit.exe
0: kd> knL
# Child-SP RetAddr Call Site
00 fffff880`03581b08 fffff800`01e5fab2 nt!KeBugCheckEx
01 fffff880`03581b10 fffff800`01e0aabb nt!PspCatchCriticalBreak+0x92
02 fffff880`03581b50 fffff800`01d89f04 nt! ?? ::NNGAKEGL::`string'+0x17486
03 fffff880`03581ba0 fffff800`01ad0e53 nt!NtTerminateProcess+0xf4
04 fffff880`03581c20 00000000`778d157a nt!KiSystemServiceCopyEnd+0x13
05 00000000`0020f7a8 00000000`00000000 0x778d157a
0: kd> !error 36b1
Error code: (Win32) 0x36b1 (14001) - The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail.
The issue in this case occurs because WinPE tries to compact the offline registry and fails to commit the registry hives back to disk. This problem only happen when you deploy windows 7 and use WinPE 5.0 or 5.1, 32 bit, to deploy the image. Resolution is to set:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Configuration Manager
Name: RegistryReorganizationLimitDays
Datatype: DWORD
Value: 365
Setting this value has the effect that the registry hives are not compacted as long as the modified date of the hives is not older than a year. When you intend to use the deployment longer than a year, a higher value must be chosen.
If you have run into this issue and you managed to resolve it using this information, please let me know! Do note that not all STOP 0xF4 errors are the same! If you have another 0xF4 and need help, reach out!