Application Access Violation or Hang After Applyin

Application Access Violation or Hang After Applying SP4
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The information in this article applies:
Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 4.0
Microsoft Windows NT Server, Enterprise Edition 4.0
Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
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IMPORTANT: This article contains information about editing the registry. before you edit the registry, make sure you understand how to restore it if a problem occurs. for information about how to do this, view the "Restoring the Registry" Help topic in Regedit.exe or the "Restoring a Registry Key" Help topic in Regedt32.exe.
SYMPTOMS
After applying Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 (SP4) or Windows 2000, you encounter lockups or access violation (Dr. Watson) errors in an application that appeared to be working fine previusly.
NOTE: You might encounter other symptoms or errors in an application that relate to the below-mentioned cause.
CAUSE
The application in question is errantly trying to access a block of memory that it had previusly freed or deallocated. with Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3 (SP3) and earlier, such a reallocation is more likely to succeed, since the same memory location is more likely to still be available for reallocation. SP4 and later, however, introduces a change in the heap manager allocation patterns that can result in a failure of such a reallocation request. for more information on this change, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: