[ajehan]

I have recently built a m8 a basic pc for home use using XP Pro SP2 . It will now keep restarting with a brief showing of a blue screen with a ***STOP 0x0000007E error message. I cannot at all load up in safe mode. I have tried the following:-
> changed video adapters but this did not fix the problem
> put in another hard disk with the same operating system, but it still keeps restarting
> tried re-installing operating system on hard disk but this was stopped by the error message, so i cannot get into recovery console.
> updated the system BIOS
This tells me that there is a hardware problem, but as i have never come across this before, i am not sure what to try next. urgent help needed...

[Advertisements]

Have you considered removing everything which is not essential, leaving one memory stick in, setting the BIOS to defaults to see if it boots, or allows you to carry on with the install of XP

[Retired Tech]

Have you considered removing everything which is not essential, leaving one memory stick in, setting the BIOS to defaults to see if it boots, or allows you to carry on with the install of XP

[ajehan]

The pc has got two dvd drives, agp graphics card, one hard disk and thats all. I tried putting the same hard disk into another pc and it booted up fine. I have tried loading up with fail safe defaults and optimized defaults but still no luck. Could it be the ram that is damaged ? I cannot see how anything else could stop the boot process.

[Retired Tech]

If you have compatible ram from a working PC you could try that, or just leave one stick in and change it if it still does not load

[ajehan]

Theres one 512mb stick in there already. So it willnot load up with that. I will try compatible ram and get back to u l8er.

[WinCrazy]

You could run MemTest86 from HERE. You need to burn an ISO disc image to a CD and then boot from it. It will start a very thorough RAM test. If you don't have a burning application from Nero, Roxio, etc., a very nice free program is CDBurnerXP Pro downloadable from HERE. This all these programs have an option to burn an ISO image file to CD. Let the program run through 3 iterations - it should show no errors. If it does, shut down completely and run it again with only one stick of RAM at a time so you can isolate the faulty one (or two ?!).

If MemTest86 shows no errors you could try to do a "Repair Install".

Edited by WinCrazy, 28 March 2006 - 12:19 PM.

[ajehan]

I have inserted similar compatible ram and now it loads up at normal. It took time isolating the fault but i have improved my troubleshooting skills. thanks for help everyone. I might still run that memory test to see the results.

[Retired Tech]

Thank You for letting us know