[Winpcap-users] crashing windows 7 with winpcap 4.1.2, any pointers on narrowing down the culprit?

[Sam Roberts]

Note for others who might have this problem.

Writing ethernet frames less than 15 bytes causes windows 7, 32bit, to
blue screen instantly, when win7 is running within vm workstation 9.

With win7-32 running on actual hardware, it doesn't.

That suggests the issue is either the vmware ethernet drivers, or
perhaps WinPcap's interaction with those drivers.

Pre-padding the packets with NULs out to 17 bytes or so prevents the
blue-screen (and is what drivers do internally anyhow, out to the min
MTU size, so causes no observable difference in traffic).

Cheers,
Sam