Are you having trouble locating the culprit who is zapping an executive or pool space location ? Sometimes, by the time you get an XDT or crash, the program, driver or directive which caused the problem is long gone. If you happen to have SPM support in your SYSGEN, you can possibly track the problem down a little easier. If the location being zapped is consistent, you can monitor its contents by patching the SPM hook to branch off and check if it changed. The SPM hook is dispatched for almost every executive function (directives, interrupts, etc.) When SPM is turned off, the dispatch hook ($HKEXT) points to essentially a return sequence. When SPM is turned on, $HKEXT points to a lower location in the SPM executive routine which tracks the function being processed. All we have to do is to patch in a monitoring routine just above the hook return and point $HKEXT to the start of this routine. The following is an example of a monitoring routine to check for a location being changed: actual instruction octal equivalent CMP 13276,#66044 022737,013276,066044 ; see if location has changed BEQ .+1 001401 BPT 000003 ; yes, XDT so we can look at it ; here we continue with normal SPM return code. open the following locations in listed order to monitor locations getting zapped. location from to actual instruction 066016 132540 022737 (location #1 check) CMP AAAAAA,#BBBBBB 066020 000006 BBBBBB (location #1 expected contents) 066022 017646 AAAAAA (location #1 address) 066024 000006 001005 BNE .+5 066026 004736 022737 (location #2 check) CMP CCCCCC,#DDDDDD 066030 012667 DDDDDD (location #2 contents) 066032 104336 CCCCCC (location #2 address) 066034 012667 001001 BNE .+1 066036 105414 000003 (breakpoint) BPT normal return code follows 001326 066040 066016 (hook dispatch address)