Computer Blue Screens no matter what the fuck I do.

maximumzero

My boss at my place of work gave me a Dell computer to fix up for him so the lady at the front desk can use it. He said his kids had essentially trashed it, so I agreed, as I figured it was a simple matter of popping in the restore CD and cleaning it up to factory fresh.

Well, it's turning out it's not that simple. I can insert either a Windows XP CD or the Dell Restore CD, and I get a Blue screen 'o death right after the Windows Setup program gets to the "starting windows" portion. I can't even get as far as to format the hard drive.

So I ran a ubuntu live cd and formatted the drive, trying to wipe out any viruses and what have you, and then tried to run the Windows setup CD again. Still a blue screen. Linux runs without problem, even after installing it, so it doesn't seem to be a hardware issue, and the computer doesn't have a floppy drive so I can't run a win98 boot disk to fdisk the fucker.

I've been doing this for the last three hours to no avail. Thoughts?

ZackSchilling

Check to make sure the RAM is ok.

Download this:
http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.4a.iso.zip

Burn it to a CD (you can use your Mac to do this), boot it, and let it run for a while. It'll report any errors due to bad RAM.

The other suspect is the HD. I'm not sure how you'd test that if the machine won't boot without buying some kind of diagnostic tool, but a replacement is surely around if there are a lot of computers in the workplace.

maximumzero

Runnin the memory test now.

Trentus

What does the BSOD say? Or does it just reboot itself before you get a chance to read it (I hate when that happens)?

If you have some spare machines lying around (although it kinda sounds like you don't, with your boss bringing in a machine from home), then you might as well just swap out the RAM for some stuff that you know (or think) is good. I wasted a day running memtest (let it go over night) and never had it fail. Swapped out the RAM and the problem didn't exist anymore... tried a few combinations to nut out which stick was bad and done! Didn't take more than half an hour (including a brief chat to a colleague about the previous night's episode of top gear).

Also, again, if you have a working machine handy, try banging the HD into it an installing the OS. Then chuck it back in the faulting machine and see if you can boot it up and get everything else set up. I figure that if you can get the OS installed and it doesn't fault again while you're installing drivers and apps, then good enough.

maximumzero

I'll get the error message for you once the memory test is done running.

I might have a little 4GB drive somewhere around the house I can try to install onto, and my only other computer in the house that I could put the hard drive into to test doesn't have SATA, which the computer with the problems has uses.

maximumzero

Memory test passes with no issues whatsoever.

Here's the error message:

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer.

Technical Information:

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF7A9263C, 0XC0000034, 0X00000000, 0X00000000)

maximumzero

What baffles me is that it can't be an issue with the hard drive because Ubuntu installed with no problem.

zanetheinsane

I am very familiar with 7B blue screens. What they mean is that Windows cannot load the drivers or will not load the drivers in order to detect the hard drive for some reason.

Basically what's happening is that Windows setup is copying over all of the files for the install, then when it restarts and tries to boot from the hard drive to finish the install, it tells you that it can't find the files (in the form of a 7B) error because the install that is running can't see the hard drive. Yes I know that sounds retarded but that might help you out.

There might be some kind of controller drivers you need to load for windows.

EDIT: I was reading some more into it and another thing that can cause it is a bad Windows disc. It basically creates the same "can't read from media" error that brings up the 7B stop. If you have another disc you can use it might be worth a shot to check that first.

1ddqd

Try using another disc. I have had this same error - it will load the drivers but not let you install the OS, and sometimes will let you install the OS but BSODs mid-install.

Also, it *could* be a hardware issue - Linux may not be using all devices if they are random/unsupported vendors.

maximumzero

zanetheinsane wrote: »

I am very familiar with 7B blue screens. What they mean is that Windows cannot load the drivers or will not load the drivers in order to detect the hard drive for some reason.

Basically what's happening is that Windows setup is copying over all of the files for the install, then when it restarts and tries to boot from the hard drive to finish the install, it tells you that it can't find the files (in the form of a 7B) error because the install that is running can't see the hard drive. Yes I know that sounds retarded but that might help you out.

There might be some kind of controller drivers you need to load for windows.

EDIT: I was reading some more into it and another thing that can cause it is a bad Windows disc. It basically creates the same "can't read from media" error that brings up the 7B stop. If you have another disc you can use it might be worth a shot to check that first.

I don't believe it's a bad disc, as I've tried both a XP Pro Sp3 disc and the actual Dell restore CD, and both act the same way.

Would it help if I got you guys the model # of the computer?

lilB

Check your BIOS settings, disable anything that refers to AHCI / RAID, set everything to compatibility or defaults or whatever. Then restart your install from scratch.

Post the model number too, and any other specs you can dig up.

Probably a driver/BIOS issue if your ram is OK.

zanetheinsane

If it's a Dell, you may need to F6 during the initial Windows Setup to load OEM hard drive controller drivers. They would most likely be on your Dell disc.

maximumzero

So it turns out that the restore CD he gave me isn't for this Dell specifically. Honestly it doesn't matter because I want a clean XP install rather than all the shit that Dell includes.

It's a Dell Dimension E520.

maximumzero

I found someone on another message board with a similar issue but I haven't seen a response to it so it's apparently not just me.

Ok, so I'm glad I found this thread because I'm having the exact same problem with my friends Dell Dimension E520. I tried to format the PC, but with problems involving her DVD drive (since made to work, but still dodgy) I simply took the HDD out and feformatted it in my machine, then copied over the XP setup files.

Now whenever I try and boot from the drive in my machine, its absolutely fine. However, in her machine it gives me the blue screen error described above (on the XP logo loading screen).

Seeing as I've managed to get the DVDROM drive to work, I tried to do the format on her machine (start over), but I get the Blue Screen when the formatting loader thingo says "Setup is loading windows" or something.

fbm2themex seems to have the right idea, as I'm pretty sure there is something to do with RAID thats supposed to be set up on this machine, which I am assuming formatting and installing windows on my machine (on her drive) would mess up. I just don't think Dell has these RAID driver boot-disk options or whatever.

But yeah, suggestions?

Edit:

And here as well:

Question Can't reformat pc/blue screen error...
Hi folks!
I'm working on a friends Dell Dimension E520 with SATA HD w/ 512Mb RAM, Pentium 4HT. He said he couldnt' get it to boot and at first it didn't but I finally got it to boot but only for a few seconds. I suspected a virus. I want to wipe the drive and reformat but I'm having trouble with that.
I installed the drive in another pc and was able to format in there so the drive itself is good.
Here's what happens...I put in the Windows XP Pro disk and it finally boots to the CD BUT as soon as it loads all the drivers I get the blue screen saying the pc had to shut down to protect it from damage error code 0x0000007B. And that's as far as I can get with it.
I also put in another hard drive and it does the same with that one also so I'm certain it's not the hard drive anymore.
I've checked both HD and Memory test with windows utilities. I was very fortunate to get that far but that was only once.
The error code is 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0x806357F1, 0xA3243988, 0x00000000) when I got it to boot into Windows (just once only).
Can anyone help me out here?
Thanks so much and God bless for all your help!
Peter

maximumzero

zanetheinsane wrote: »

If it's a Dell, you may need to F6 during the initial Windows Setup to load OEM hard drive controller drivers. They would most likely be on your Dell disc.

I'll try this when I get home, thanks.

richhitch

I recently worked on a Dimension E520 with the same exact issue. My remedy was to access bios and change SATA configuration. Good Luck

AF-IX

I had a VERY similar 7B issue of BSOD with my latest computer build.

It turns out the problem was that I had connected my SSD drive (OCS Vertex 3) onto the Marvell SATA controller/connector on the motherboard (Maximus 4 Extreme-Z).
I disconnected it and plugged it into the Intel SATA conroller/connector (also 6gb/s) and the problem went away completely.

I'm too lazy now to look up what SATA controllers your board uses, but try connecting the drive cable to a different controller/connector. It's worth a shot.