BSOD 7B stop message....how to fix?!

[lordfsa]

As in the title, im faced with a permanent 7B BSOD stop error message on my pavillion laptop. My current knowledge indicates that is a boot loader error, and as you may naturally expect, i am desperate to fix it!

I have tried using the advanced startup options to use the last configurations which worked and safe mode, but i get the same BSOD stop error.

I placed my hard disk in another laptop and it boots fine, i have even been able to log in and use it as normal. However, when i put a hard disk running a perfectly fine copy of windows xp home to my pavillion laptop, i get the same 7B stop error.

My pavillion refuses to boot from CDs as well.

It seems to me the problem isnt with my hard disk and the OS version on it, but with the remaining components on my laptop...but what could be the criminal?


Would anyone be able to shed some light on my problem? Of course, I will provide more details as requested.

Hoping for some speedy responses or suggestions.

Regards,


FSA

 

[stduc]

When you tried it in another laptop, was that the same make & model, or not? If not then drivers etc will have been updated.

You could try booting using that other laptop & then instructing it to restore to an old restore point you know worked on the troubled laptop and swapping the HDD back before it re-boots.

You could take a look at this Microsoft article.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;314082

That may help - or confuse!

I am a bit bothered that it won't boot from a CD though. That kind of points at either a RAM or IDE controller hardware issue.

 

[lordfsa]

That article leans towards receiving the BSOD error when the system disk is moved to another laptop...but that is not the case. The BSOD error occurs when the disk is in the troubled laptop, but works fine in the other laptop.

The other laptop was not the same make and model, but the disk booted and ran XP there. I have already run my windows xp cd on the other laptop and put on a new installation of XP onto the same partition on the disk, overwriting the previous installation. (It was the same CD and version I used previously).

I also ran chkdsk through command prompt and some errors were discovered and fixed, according to the prompt i received.

I will try using system restore now, with the disk in the other laptop.

How could an IDE controller problem or RAM issue arise? The troubled laptop was running fine...the last thing i recall doing was running some windows updates, i believe some of them may have been driver softwares as well as security patches.

I guess I will try to use another CD drive on the faulty laptop and see if boot from CD occurs.

The laptop in question ran AVG anti virus, Windows Defender and Zone Alarm for firewall and PeerGuardian to protect p2p access. Despite keeping everything up-to-date.

 

[lordfsa]

Update on my attempts to fix this problem:

I put in a spare CD drive into the faulty laptop and attempted to boot from CD, but same thing happens: a flashing hash on the screen for a few seconds before the same BSOD. The CD drive does light up and the CD spins.

I have tried fitting new RAM to the faulty laptop, to no avail. The RAM which was in the faulty laptop, I tested in another laptop and that worked fine.

Anything else i could try?

 

[lordfsa]

I have reset the BIOS to the factory defaults and since Ive got two bootable CDs, both of which I tried with the same results.

Considering the hard disk has two partitions, i formatted the systems partition to put on a clean copy of xp while the disk was in the other laptop. Presumably that would rectify any corrupted boot sequences? But once I got the disk back into the faulty laptop, same old story again.

What can cause an inability to boot from CD? With your help, ive eliminated faulty cd drive and faulty cd. It isnt the RAM. The hard drive works perfectly in another machine. Is there anything else i can eliminate?

This gets more and more perplexing with every step i take.

 

[lordfsa]

Full technical information:

STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF7981528, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)


Do the parameters help shed any light?

 

[linney]

Cabling, Controllers or even the Motherboard may be faulty?

 

[stduc]

It does rather look like a hardware issue - but what?

Can you boot to a DOS floppy?

If so it might be worth running some diagnostics? Such as

http://www.pc-diagnostics.com/pc_diagnostics_tools/index.shtml

but hopefully someone can suggest some free ones?

 

[lordfsa]

unfortunately the faulty laptop doesnt have a floppy drive....would i be able to connect my desktop floppy drive to it somehow?

in all honesty...if it is a hardware problem, do you suggest i persevere trying to fix it? you may have presumed, i have no warranty on it.

 

[phillid2]

Laptops are expensive to fix. Tough choice. If you open it up to tighten something that is loose, and it does not work, at least you tried.

Don Phillips

http://worthingtonengineering.com

 

[linney]

External floppy drive for laptop

http://www.nextag.com/external-floppy-drive-for-laptop/search-html

This thread talks about Laptop Adapters.

ReImage laptop hard drive
thread779-1261355

One way or another you are going to need to get your XP CD booting, without a working CD drive your options are even further limited.

 

[wolluf]

lordfsa - one bit of info you never gave - history. Presumably this laptop did work ok - so when did this behaviour begin? And had you made any hardware/software changes shortly before this? If answer to second question is no, then suspect some hardware item has died (probably on the motherbaord) - which would mean an expensive repair.

 

[lordfsa]

wolluf,

history:

laptops worked like a dream for six months...i bought it from that bargain haven on eBay. The last thing i did was install three driver updates windows update recommended me to install. I, in hindsight wrongly, trusted microsofts analysis of my laptop, installed them, tried restarting and there we have my problems.

I made no hardware changes to the laptop...

Any possible solutions?

 

[wolluf]

Ok - seen ms driver updates cause problems before. Suggest you use something like this:-

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545

(assuming you have system restore enabled).

basically restore the registry from backup BEFORE you did that driver update (I use this approach often - usually using a BartPE disk to get access to the drive - can just do a straight copy from sys restore backup to \system32\config then (backing up originals of course).

 

[lordfsa]

I can understand the logic behind your suggestion, however, considering i cannot boot from CDs to access the recovery console...im a little stuck, right?

 

[linney]

BartPE is supposed to be able to run off a USB thumb drive if you have one of those and can boot from it?

http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=10806

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

 

[lordfsa]

@linney:

I went through the entire procedure of setting up BartPE on my USB thumb drive, yet my faulty laptop refuses to boot from it! Under its boot menu, i put 'removable drives' on top, the installation of BartPE went without errors (I can understand this can be a longwinded process)...

...but it did not help sort this laptop out.

So it seems my faulty laptop refuses to boot from anything....what would cause that sort of a problem and is there any feasible way around it?

-FSA

 

[linney]

To make sure you have configured your Bios to actually boot from USB (if it can, as some just can't) have a look at this site and perhaps the HP one too.

Boot from USB Flash drive

http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusbstick.php

Utility to make USB flash drives bootable (HP links)

http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/2004/10/utility_to_make_usb_flash_driv.html

Otherwise you may be battling a hardware fault?

 

[lordfsa]

Linney,

My phoenix bios likes to display usb drives as a hard disk, so i did expand that under the boot menu and prioritise that. After following the specified instructions of setting up a boot disk on a floppy and copying the files and boot sector onto the usb stick, i now get the following on my faulty laptop:

'Disk I/O error. Replace the disk, and then press any key'

Presumably im getting this error as the laptop is trying to boot from the usb?

 

[linney]

As I said, some Bios will never boot from USB no matter what you do. I suggest you reset the Bios back to Safe defaults save that setup and exit, and then again further set up the Bios so that it boots from CD-Drive first and hard drive last, exit and save that setting.

You are going to get your CD Drive sorted before you can make any further progress. When we get a CD drive that works there are several more steps we can try to get the hard drive booting in the laptop.

Does your laptop still have no floppy access, if it did we can make suggestions that avoid the use of the CD drive?

Perhaps it is time to throw in the towel and have a repairer look at the malfunctioning laptop. Your hard drive sounds like it is OK, however the things that connect it to the rest of the machine may have broken, disconnected, or otherwise failed.