Worker thread returned at bad IRQL...

Working on a Gateway GT5404 (Vista 64-bit, SP3, Pentium D 915 @2.8, 1 gig DDR2, 250 gig SATA II, Intel 950 graphics) - original complaint was screen just went blank - ran a chkdsk /r, which ran through after fixing several bad sectors - started doing the antispyware/antivirus scans, and started getting a blue screen:

Worker thread returned at bad IRQL

0X000000E1

0X8E8070A1, 0X00000002,
0X00000000, 0X8E92D260

Through research, this is apparently caused by a bad driver - I'm getting ready to run the ln (List Nearest Symbols) debugger command, but if anyone has any hints, suggestions, or tips, I'm all ears...

T.I.A.

 

Not a bump - just an update...

The situation steadily worsened until the machine was practically useless: Safe Mode and Restore Points were all affected by the BSOD, so I couldn't get into a Windows environment to use the MS debugging tools...

We located the Gateway Restore CD, which formatted the drive, but the same BSOD occured after about 60% of the factory reinstall - this happened several times after disabling all onboard peripherals, swapping and testing RAM, resetting motherboard to safe defaults, reshuffling the IRQ list, etc...

I suspect the culprit must be a motherboard-specific driver or software, but the Gateway BIOS, chipset, storage, and ethernet flashes are all Windows executables, and the machine has no floppy, so it's a catch-22...

The machine did, however, accept a Linux install, after a couple of minor hard drive hiccups - so, it's up and running happily with Mint 7 (Gloria)...

Thanks for your interest...