Comments on: [Solution] Windows Vista Data Execution Prevention (DEP) Crashing Mozilla Firefox 3.0

By: Phillip Remaker

Phillip Remaker — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:09:17 +0000

Actually, this command is COMPLETELY dangerous. The whole point of DEP is to stop allowing malware to take advantage of buffer overruns and compromise your system.

Turning DEP off is the wrong answer. If the program is failing due to DEP, there is either a misbehaving plug-in or some spyware/virus/worm.

Turning DEP off just lest the malware run freely.

There is an underlying problem if DEP is tripping.

By: sam

sam — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:48:40 +0000

i tried it but my command prompt keeps sayin, " the boot configuration data store could not be opened,"

By: Nick Myers

Nick Myers — Fri, 22 May 2009 11:23:49 +0000

I have a Dell XPS M1730 which blue screened on boot after running this command:

bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff

Having hunted around on the web, I thought to 'undo' my mistake of following this tip, I would just use the command to 'turn it back on'

bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOn

But this didn't work, I still got a blue screen. However the following did work and I'm back in Windows without having to reinstall or repair.

bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx OptIn

Thought I'd post a reply here because your site came up in the first page of google results for the terms "vista dep blue screen".

YMMV - Peace

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:08:07 +0000

I had the same issue, turns out Vista didn't like me turning off DEP to try to get Acrobat 8 to work

To fix it without having to reinstall Windows, do this (going off of memory, sorry if it's not 100%):

Put your disc in, and load the system repair.

It might end up repairing a few things and restart the system, let it do it. It should probably continue to fail.

Restart, and start again, going through Startup Repair enough that it finally says it can't fix it. At that point you can tell it to show you advanced options. You can pull up a command prompt.

Run the command, turning it back to always on, but replace current with default, so the command looks like this:

bcdedit.exe /set {default} nx AlwaysOn

I did that and it was rock n' roll

By: gaby

gaby — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 03:19:51 +0000

I followed your tip and now I have a blue scree everytime I boot windows and nothing seems to repair the problem.

By: VG

VG — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:51:35 +0000

^^ Its a security feature but creates problems many times.

By: Saurabh Gupta

Saurabh Gupta — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:20:37 +0000

Nice post VG,
but der is a small problem i dont know wat is DEP exactly.

By: Kunal

Kunal — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:17:20 +0000

Turning off DEP is doesn't appear to be a valid solution - DEP was put in to protect the OS from malicious programs. Seems to me that FF should be fixed.

By: Car54

Car54 — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:56:38 +0000

Thanks Vishal,your solution, it worked great. I'm not sure if I'll go back to Firefox version 2, and restart DEP (thanks for the restarting thread) or not. As always, thank you.

By: VG

VG — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:24:31 +0000

^^ Glad to know it worked for you.