Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Service Access Violation

• Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 4.0
• Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0

SYMPTOMS

The remote procedure call (RPC) service fails with an access violation. Typically, this produces a failure report in the Drwtsn32.log file that looks similar to the following:

   Application exception occurred:
      App: exe\rpcss.dbg (pid=129)
      When: 03/04/1997 @ 11:17:7.316
      Exception number: c0000005 (access violation) 

CAUSE

A corrupt RPC packet is being sent to the remote procedure call (RPC) service. The code that unmarshalls the data (unpacks it for execution) fails under certain conditions of packet corruption.

RESOLUTION

The only workaround to the problem is to determine the cause of the RPC packet corruption from the client. This has been historically traced back to hardware problems caused by a failure to copy the bytes of the packet correctly by a router, bridge, or network card. In one instance, a network card was using bus mastering I/O and this appeared to be causing the frame to be transmitted improperly. Disabling bus mastering on the client network card solved this problem.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Windows NT version 4.0. This problem was corrected in the latest Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 U.S. Service Pack. For information on obtaining the service pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

S E R V P A C K

Keywords : kbhw kbnetwork kbbug4.00 kbfix4.00 kbRPC kbSDKPlatform ntnetserv kbfix4.00.sp2 NTSrvWkst kbGrpNet
Version : 4.0
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbbug