So I was happily trying to debug my code in a Windows XP box and I was trying to mess with the network settings before I re-started the machine. Upon restarting, lo and behold, I get the dreaded BSOD. (Disclaimer: I haven’t had much experience with this monster anymore, as I’ve switched out all my machines at home from Windows to OSX  some years ago so just seeing that blue screen triggered a lot of old anxieties).

BSOD Message:
DRIVER_UNLOADED_WITHOUT_CANCELLING_PENDING_OPERATIONS caused by intelppm.sys.

Anyway, after googling quite a lot, I finally found one solution that worked for me. Turns out, you can actually manually disable these INTEL PPM drivers (with no negative side effect) by going to the following location in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Processor

Or

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Intelppm

And changing the ‘Start’ value to ‘4’.

以上です