BSOD when resuming from sleep if media center running

Balance · 22 Nov 2009

When I put my machine to sleep (either allowing the power options to do it for me or selecting sleep from the shutdown mennu or from media center so how makes no difference) it fails to restart & I get a BSOD with kernel_data_inpage_error with the first code 7A and the second code of 20.

I'm on my 2nd install of Windows 7 (Pro, legit copy!) on my machine - I broke the last install but I "know" my hardware is working.

I have run memtest+ and got no memory errors.

I've run chkdsk and found no problems.

I have recreated my paging file (set to no paging file, reboot, set to a value, reboot) & that makes no odds.

In all of my tests the machine resumes from sleep perfectly unless media centre is running - in fact I've been looking through the event viewer and it is clear that sleep has been used a lot of times - I've taken a clean install of W7, added Paragon Drive Backup and my Netgear Wireless adapter software and that's it - the problem only manifested yesterday (typical, everything except media centre configured & ready to roll and then I hit problems) when I first configured media center.

My machine is fully up to date according to windows update (I've skipped a NIC update offered because I know it causes problems with my NIC, not that I've got a cable plugged into it). There is a later graphics driver available from ATI but my last install ran into problems when I added more software so I was hoping to avoid that.

I have also tried without a paging file and that doesn't make any difference so I would conclude it isn't disk related either.

Event viewer shows no errors just before failure, it is only the resume that is a problem - I've reconfigured to exclude all of my media files so I have an empty config (having previously run mcupdate -MediaCenterRecoveryTask to reset as best as I could find).

To be honest I'm now at a loss as to where to go next - reinstall is looming but I would rather avoid that so suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I've attached the .dmp & .xml file that was created if anyone knows how to interpret & can give me a hand.

Thanks

torrentg · 22 Nov 2009

Hi. I didn't even look at the crash dump(s) yet.

Install the latest chipset drivers and bios from here. If you have further crashes, please post a new crash dump. Good luck.

(And run the latest video driver. Latest is always best.)

Edit - Alright I looked at it. "Typically caused by
a bad block in the paging file or disk controller error."

My advice is good.

You can run chkdsk /r C: from an elevated command prompt for each partition on the system. Change C to match the partition(s) for each run.

Balance · 22 Nov 2009

Thanks - I've avoided the later drivers because I didn't want more problems but I'll give them a go.

I have also tested now without a paging file and the problem is the same so disk / paging file seem unlikely causes.

I'm going to avoid the latest ati drivers until all other routes fail - unfortunately I've long experience of ati drivers (why do I keep ending up with ati kit, I am dumb) and newer isn't consistently better with them.

torrentg · 22 Nov 2009

What kind of problems are you having with ATI drivers? They've pretty much been perfect here for over a year since I started beta testing.

Balance · 22 Nov 2009

The ATI guys seem to fix one issue and break another - I've been working with XP and MediaPortal and the ATI drivers are the biggest problem.

That said, W7 works out of the box it seems (or did until now!).

I'm downloading drivers now (but have to do a couple of hours of playing with a 4 year old instead of playing with the computer) but don't hold out much hope because the problem only exists when media centre is running.

I've also tested with WMP running & that doesn't have the same issue & I've checked with no paging file but that doesn't help!

Balance · 22 Nov 2009

Incidentally, my last install of W7 ran into problems when I started fiddling having discovered random codec issues - generally after resume from sleep (but not consistent) so there might be more going on here! I'd ignored that issue here because I had used the latest ATI drivers and also installed DIVX to handle my MKV files (now converted to DIVX which media centre handles).

torrentg · 22 Nov 2009

I disagree about the breaking and fixing aspect of things. That's a phrase that one person on the net says and then it gets repeated everywhere.

What specifically hasn't worked well for you? I ask because if you tell me, I could probably advise on what would go better for you etc...

Balance · 22 Nov 2009

I don't recall what the issue was with the drivers - they did have a patch of problems, I recall ending up using something like 8.4 as more workable than subsequent versions - this was real because I could see the consequence which was very subtle but disasterous on the config I needed to work but I understand your sentiment about how the web propogates stuff ture or otherwise - I think in ATI's case if they actually responded to support requests they would help themselves.

Still - have moved off of MediaPortal having tested W7 & actually been impressed enough to buy a copy & Media Centre is brilliant - not as flexible as MediaPortal but a whole lot less complex to setup & get something working & as I hope to actually use this thing one day rather than tinker that's high up my list....

Anyway, at your suggestion (thank you, I needed the push) I found a newer (9.11) version to download and have downloaded and installed succesfully.

The difference so far - I have tried my sleep problem once and not received a failure, I will not say once is solved but it is once more than I had achieved before so very encouraging. More telling I think for future success is my event viewer isn't littered with atikmdag errors any longer, in fact I cleared the event logs prior to starting to change versions and I have not a single error appearing since so feeling pretty happy.

So pending more testing I would like to say thank you for your help & well done ATI!

torrentg · 22 Nov 2009

Awesome. Very glad to hear things are looking well so far.

Balance · 23 Nov 2009

Oh well.

My immediate problem has gone away but the problem I had which caused a reinstall is back - live TV fails - it tries to load & it looks like it is buffering but the screen is black & only occassional bits of speech. Jumps to full screen and then occassional shows the timer bar. Was presuming codec issues & having added the ATI drivers and got this problem.....

Any ideas where to look for logs as to what might now be wrong (yes was working before the ATI drivers were added!)