PRB: FATAL: Internal Stack Failure, System Halted

MS-DOS                 | WINDOWS

The information in this article applies to:

• Microsoft C for MS-DOS, versions 6.0, 6.0a, and 6.0ax
• Microsoft C/C++ for MS-DOS, version 7.0
• Microsoft Visual C++ for Windows, versions 1.0 and 1.5

SYMPTOMS

For MS-DOS version 3.2 or later, the following message is issued by MS-DOS when too many interrupts occur too quickly and the pool of internal stack frames is exhausted:

   FATAL: Internal Stack Failure, System Halted

RESOLUTION

Increasing the number of stacks allocated for use by interrupt handlers in the STACKS command in CONFIG.SYS usually corrects the problem.

MORE INFORMATION

The syntax is as follows:

   STACKS=n,s

   n = number of stacks, ranging from 8 to 64, with 9 as the default

   s = size of each stack, ranging from 32 to 512 bytes, default of
       128.

This error can occur if network cards, laboratory measurement instruments, and other devices are in use. They may generate many hardware interrupts, thus exhausting the MS-DOS stack resources.

Note: For MS-DOS version 3.3 on an IBM-PC, IBM-XT, or IBM-PC-Portable, the default for n is 0 (zero) and s is 0.