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SERIAL_DRIVER_INTERNAL
Serial port driver internal failure for SERIAL_DRIVER_INTERNAL
SERIAL_DRIVER_INTERNAL is bug check code 0x00000038. This bug check belongs to the kernel serial-port stack. It points at a serial controller, serial class/filter driver, or legacy COM-port path that violated an internal state assumption while handling interrupts, queues, power transitions, or device teardown.
How to read it in a dump
- Use the stack and loaded modules to identify whether serial.sys, a vendor UART driver, a USB-to-serial driver, or a serial filter is involved.
- The numeric arguments are less useful without matching symbols; the failing driver and operation phase are usually more important.
- Do not diagnose it as a user-mode COM-port open failure; the system stopped in kernel serial-driver code.
What to check
- Check recent serial/USB/industrial I/O drivers and firmware.
- Enable Driver Verifier for the serial miniport/filter path if the crash is reproducible.
- Correlate with device removal, sleep/resume, high interrupt load, or line-status changes.
References
Dump evidence
Preserve the complete dump, the four bug-check parameters, the exact Windows build, loaded-module list, and the event timeline immediately before the stop. AllStat summarizes the condition as “this result”; that sentence identifies the failure class, while the parameters and stack determine which object, driver, processor, or subsystem instance was involved.
Analysis order
- Run WinDbg
!analyze -v, then inspect the documented meaning of each parameter instead of relying only on the probably-caused-by line. - find the earliest abnormal event: driver update, firmware change, device reset, storage error, verifier report, resource exhaustion, or application hang connected with serial / driver / internal.
- keep third-party filter, security, storage, graphics, and virtualization drivers in the module inventory; removing evidence before dump analysis can obscure the responsible path.
Do not repeatedly reboot a machine affected by this result before collecting the dump and event logs. Recovery actions should follow the component identified by the stack and parameters, not merely the symbolic stop-code name.
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