How would you start to chase down this problem?

[leoblob]

My son used all his high school graduation present $$ and lots of his own savings to buy a Dell refurbished gaming tower system. From the beginning, it has hung when installing certain games but not others. Other than that it's been running OK, but today he got the BSOD with the following error message:

0x0000007A KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR

0xC0402B90, 0xC0000185, 0x8057208C, 0xB3054860

I poked around some on Microsoft's site, and I can see that this is clearly beyond me... particularly with me at home and him (and the computer) off at college.

He's in the process of contacting Dell tech support, but is there anything I could do to point him in the right direction? I appreciate any help as this is the first "good" computer he's ever had and he's very disappointed.

Thanks.

[Harryc]

"Stop 0x7A is usually caused by a bad block (sector) in a paging file, a virus, a disk controller error, or failing RAM. "

I'd have him run memtest86 and loop it overnight. Also do a virus scan.

[carbon_unit]

After doing as Harryc described if you haven't found the problem get the windows recovery console installed or boot to a windows cd and run "chkdsk /r"

[GomJabbar]

A little Googling revealed what Harryc already stated. I also found the following.

Cause

Frequently, you can determine the cause of the KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR bug check from the error status (Parameter 2). Some common status codes include the following:
0xC000009A, or STATUS_INSUFFICIENT_RESOURCES, indicates a lack of nonpaged pool resources.
0xC000009C, or STATUS_DEVICE_DATA_ERROR, typically indicates bad blocks (sectors) on the hard disk.
0xC000009D, or STATUS_DEVICE_NOT_CONNECTED, indicates defective or loose cabling, termination, or that the controller does not see the hard disk.
0xC000016A, or STATUS_DISK_OPERATION_FAILED, indicates bad blocks (sectors) on the hard disk.
0xC0000185, or STATUS_IO_DEVICE_ERROR, indicates improper termination or defective cabling on SCSI devices or that two devices are trying to use the same IRQ.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms793989.aspx

Error Message:

KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR

Explanation:

This Stop message indicates that the requested page of kernel data from the paging file could not be read into memory. This Stop message is usually caused by a bad block (sector) in a paging file, a virus, a disk controller error, or failing RAM. In rare cases, it is caused when nonpaged pool resources run out. It is also caused by defective hardware.

User Action:

If the I/O status is C0000185 and the paging file is on a SCSI disk, the disk cabling and SCSI termination should be checked for problems. Check your computer for viruses, using any up-to-date, commercial virus scanning software that examines the Master Boot Record of the hard disk. <snip>

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodte ... x?mfr=true

HTH

[leoblob]

Wow, responses already. Thanks!

When I was on Microsoft's site, I guess I didn't read stuff carefully enough. When I saw the info about improper SCSI operation I stopped there since my son's computer has a SATA controller. So, I didn't get to the part about IRQ conflicts.

We've done a virus scan with AVG 7.5 free. I like the idea of memtest86 and of chkdsk /r. I will try to talk him thru device manager to check for IRQ conflicts (he's not super computer literate).

These are excellent, concrete suggestions which I very much appreciate.