Solved BSOD when playing demanding games, STOP: 0x0000007a

[Kemott]

The BSOD says: KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR
STOP: 0x0000007a (0x00....20, 0xFF...C000009D, 0xFF...A800DC20078, 0x00...0)

I think my problem started about 9 months ago, but now I started noticing it often because of new game(PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds) where it happens almost every time. When playing, after 2-20 minutes (but mostly right when the match starts) my PC will freeze. When I alt+tab it is just a black screen, can't ctrl+alt+delete. It will stay like this for about 3 minutes and then either PC starts responding again, or it reboots or I get this bluescreen(rarest).

I also had it happen in Witcher 3 and Fallout 4(and some others, randomly after 30 minutes), both being pretty demanding while Battlegrounds is also badly optimized.

5 full runs of Memtest (4/4) ran fine, I had a computer technician do some tests and everything including PSU seems to be fine. I checked my HDD with HD Tune and Data Lifeguard Diagnostics(Western Digital) and both quick and extended tests passed here twice, also included SMART data screenshots(and BSOD photo).

I suspect either HDD or motherboard to be faulty and these can't really be tested without replacements as far as I know. I was getting error in event viewer no.11 : "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort0." which was my HDD. I disconnected my CD-Rom, swapped their SATA cables and ports but that didn't help. I got rid of that error spam by connecting my HDD to the 3rd never used SATA.

I tested my GPU and CPU with different temperatures, ranging from 65-76 celcius under load (extra cooling, open/closed case) but that didn't change anything. I also know that GPU and CPU usage drop below 10% during the freeze.

I updated my BIOS to latest version but that didn't fix anything. Also tried many BIOS setting(not overclocking).

The weirdest thing is that when I ran both tests on my HDD with DLD utility, after those 2 hours I played the game for 5 hours straight without a freeze. But then the next day it happened again, even after running those tests again so it might be luck.

Edit1: Forgot to mention, after PC reboots itself (with or without BSOD) I have to turn it off because it doesn't see my HDD.

Any help would be appreciated, I was planning to just replace my HDD and hope for the best. This forum is my last chance

 

[axe0]

Hi Kemott,

Have you run chkdsk on your partitions?

 

[Kemott]

Not yet, with what parameters should I run it? I heard it takes a long time to finish so I will probably want to run it overnight.

 

[axe0]

Just with /r, chkdsk /r

How long it runs depends mainly on the speed of your drive and the size of it. My laptop (inspiron 15R 5521), 1TB hard drive, takes roughly 2-4 hours to finish chkdsk.

 

[Kemott]

I ran chkdsk separately for each of 3 partitions, it seems it didn't find anything wrong.

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.                         

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
  246272 file records processed.                                          File verification completed.
  628 large file records processed.                                      0 bad file records processed.                                        2 EA records processed.                                              54 reparse records processed.                                       CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
  313084 index entries processed.                                         Index verification completed.
  0 unindexed files scanned.                                           0 unindexed files recovered.                                       CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
  246272 file SDs/SIDs processed.                                         Cleaning up 1043 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 1043 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 1043 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
  33407 data files processed.                                            CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
  37605792 USN bytes processed.                                             Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
  246256 files processed.                                                 File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
  15395869 free clusters processed.                                         Free space verification is complete.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

 157458431 KB total disk space.
  95413116 KB in 160027 files.
    106316 KB in 33408 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
    355519 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
  61583480 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
  39364607 total allocation units on disk.
  15395870 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
00 c2 03 00 a6 f3 02 00 cf 7f 05 00 00 00 00 00  ................
ca 02 00 00 36 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ....6...........
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................

*********************************************************

Checking file system on D:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.                         

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
  796160 file records processed.                                          File verification completed.
  45 large file records processed.                                      0 bad file records processed.                                        0 EA records processed.                                              0 reparse records processed.                                       CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
  948922 index entries processed.                                         Index verification completed.
  0 unindexed files scanned.                                           0 unindexed files recovered.                                       CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
  796160 file SDs/SIDs processed.                                         Cleaning up 66 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 66 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 66 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
  76382 data files processed.                                            CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
  1101792 USN bytes processed.                                             Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
  796144 files processed.                                                 File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
  64782683 free clusters processed.                                         Free space verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

 492542975 KB total disk space.
 232227976 KB in 703414 files.
    305924 KB in 76383 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
    878339 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
 259130736 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
 123135743 total allocation units on disk.
  64782684 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
00 26 0c 00 21 e6 0b 00 3d 2a 15 00 00 00 00 00  .&..!...=*......
3b 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ;...............
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................

*************************************************************

Checking file system on E:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.                         

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
  328960 file records processed.                                          File verification completed.
  1324 large file records processed.                                      0 bad file records processed.                                        0 EA records processed.                                              0 reparse records processed.                                       CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
  421586 index entries processed.                                         Index verification completed.
  0 unindexed files scanned.                                           0 unindexed files recovered.                                       CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
  328960 file SDs/SIDs processed.                                         Cleaning up 73 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 73 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 73 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
  46314 data files processed.                                            CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
  1073840 USN bytes processed.                                             Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
  328944 files processed.                                                 File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
  49290113 free clusters processed.                                         Free space verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

 326655999 KB total disk space.
 128998656 KB in 173557 files.
     90628 KB in 46315 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
    406259 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
 197160456 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
  81663999 total allocation units on disk.
  49290114 allocation units available on disk.

Also did HDTune benchmark, including screentshot.

 

[axe0]

Looks like there were some issues fixed on the C: partition, see if this helps

 

[Kemott]

No it didn't, my PC still freezes when playing Battlegrounds and probably(99%) in other games that it used to freeze. I got no problems when playing older, easier on PC games. Battlegrounds is just the fastest and least random to trigger it as it constantly uses CPU and GPU at over 70% and forces to load many textures.

I noticed that my PC is slower at loading stuff than 1 year ago so I expected it to be HDD related but now I'm not so sure, as every program says it's fine, but maybe it can't be really trusted. I also know that full format and reinstall of Windows didn't help.

 

[axe0]

What sata port is your drive connected to?
Have you tried to use a different sata port?
Could you update or reinstall the chipset drivers please.

 

[Kemott]

I tried 3 different sata ports, it is now connected to the 3rd one that was never used before. Also swapped cables with my CD-ROM.
I reinstalled the drivers but that didn't help.

Also, this BSOD very rarely happens, more often it comes back to normal after 3 min or just reboots. I'm wondering though why doesn't it see my HDD after such automatic reboot?

 

[axe0]

Can't explain that atm.

 

[Kemott]

Well I replaced my HDD with a new one, same model and everything seems to be working fine again, did around a week of tests. So I guess something was wrong with my old HDD and that HDD software cannot be trusted

 

[axe0]

Software is never 100% reliable, in rare cases it is wrong indeed.