The STOP 0xC2 error message is BAD_POOL_CALLER, and that word POOL causes administrators and even some support engineers to think “Performance issue” rather than “Bugcheck issue”.  It’s funny how we can sometimes get so hung up on a word or phrase that we develop tunnel vision!  Today we’re going to clear up the confusion behind this Bugcheck …

The STOP 0xC2 message does not indicate resource depletion in the same vein as our old Event ID friends 2019 & 2020.  This bugcheck message means that some Kernel-mode process or driver attempted to perform an invalid memory operation – for example:

• Allocating a memory pool size of zero bytes
• Allocating a non-existent memory pool
• Trying to free a memory pool that has already been freed
• Allocating a free memory pool at an IRQL that is too high

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