0xC0000005 - Access Violation

A Common Cause Of The 0xC0000005 Error:

The error 0xC0000005 is generated by an illegal "memory access violation". This can be caused by anything from faulty RAM, an incorrect/corrupt device driver, poorly written/updated software and more commonly under Windows XP Service pack 2, malware/adware installations.

Usually you get this error message when performing a specific task, and if that happens you need to check the corresponding 3rd party's website/support department to see if they are aware of the problem

..a while back Symantec Antivirus caused the 0xC0000005 error with an additional message about a file called SAVRT.SYS . A simple software update to the Symantec Antivirus cured the problem.

...below are a couple of other suggestions:

Number One - Microsoft Internet Explorer

SYMPTOMS:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 (and above) stops responding when you try to open an HTML document or a Web page. Additionally, you receive the following error message:

Access Violation (0xC0000005 exception)

CAUSE:

This problem may occur when you use Internet Explorer 6.0 to open an HTML document or a Web page that contains SPAN tags. If a SPAN tag is not closed correctly by using the </SPAN> tag, an access violation may occur.

The <SPAN> tag is an inline element that renders text by using a style sheet. The tag is typically used to change the style of an element or of a block of text.

<SPAN> tags are also used to group inline elements in an HTML document. For example, the following HTML document may cause an access violation because the </SPAN> tag is missing.

RESOLUTION:

Hotfix information -

A supported hotfix is now available from Microsoft, but it is only intended to correct the problem that is described in this article. Only apply it to systems that are experiencing this specific problem. This hotfix may receive additional testing. Therefore, if you are not severely affected by this problem, we recommend that you wait for the next Internet Explorer service pack that contains this hotfix.

To resolve this problem immediately, contact Microsoft Product Support Services to obtain the hotfix. For a complete list of Microsoft Product Support Services phone numbers and information about support costs, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/?ws=support

Note In special cases, charges that are ordinarily incurred for support calls may be cancelled if a Microsoft Support Professional determines that a specific update will resolve your problem. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for the specific update in question.

Number Two - D.E.P

In Windows XP Service Pack 2 Microsoft introduced Data execution prevention (DEP), a set of hardware and software technologies that perform additional checks on memory to help protect against malicious code exploits. In Windows XP SP2, DEP is enforced by both hardware and software.

Some software/application behaviours are incompatible with DEP - data execution prevention. Applications which perform dynamic code generation (such as Just-In-Time code generation) and that do not explicitly mark generated code with Execute permission might have compatibility issues with data execution prevention. Applications which are not built with SafeSEH must have their exception handlers located in executable memory regions.

Applications that attempt to violate DEP will receive an exception with status code STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xC0000005).

If an application requires executable memory, it must explicitly set this attribute on the appropriate memory by specifying PAGE_EXECUTE, PAGE_EXECUTE_READ, PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE or PAGE_EXECUTE_WRITECOPY in the memory protection argument of the Virtual* memory allocation functions.

If you are having issues with 0xC0000005 errors in DEP and a particular piece of software is causing the offence, contact the vendor for a resolution...

Note: It is possible to "Turn Off" DEP in the boot.ini file but this really would be a last step!

/NOEXECUTE

This option is only available on 32-bit versions of Windows when running on processors supporting no-execute protection. It enables no-execute protection (also known as Data Execution Protection - DEP), which results in the Memory Manager marking pages containing data as no-execute so that they cannot be executed as code. This can be useful for preventing malicious code from exploiting buffer overflow bugs with unexpected program input in order to execute arbitrary code. No-execute protection is always enabled on 64-bit versions of Windows on processors that support no-execute protection.

There are several options you can specify with this switch:

/NOEXECUTE=OPTIN Enables DEP for core system images and those specified in the DEP configuration dialog.

/NOEXECUTE=OPTOUT Enables DEP for all images except those specified in the DEP configuration dialog.

/NOEXECUTE=ALWAYSON Enables DEP on all images.

/NOEXECUTE=ALWAYSOFF Disables DEP. (This setting doesn't provide any DEP coverage for any part of the system, regardless of hardware DEP support. The processor doesn't run in Physical Address Extension (PAE) mode unless the /PAE option is present in the boot.ini file.)

You can read more about DEP at:

http://www.updatexp.com/data-execution-prevention.html