BSOD at boot up

Forums: Computers, Windows Xp, Blue Screen Of Death, Bsod, Blue Screen
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I've had BSOD (blue screen of death) problems before but never at boot up. I had a warning that something wasn't right last week when I had to make a couple attempts to start up my system. There was no BSOD, but it hung up at the Windows screen. I did a hard shut down and was able to reboot (slowly, but completely) the next time. The BSOD error (0x00000007E) doesn't indicate any particular drivers or devices, but I've noticed that I can reboot in Safe Mode, but not Safe Mode with Networking or Most Recent Working Configuration. I did a system restore in safe mode back to a set point that was a week old (before the previous warning) without effect. I'm on a Dell tower running XP. This is being posted from a different computer. Any thoughts?

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Type: Question • Score: 5 • Views: 2,064 • Replies: 18

@JPB,

First thought is a hard drive problem. Look at this site to check you hard drive from safe mode.

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@JPB,

Do you have your installation disks?

Do you have a backup?

1 Reply

@JPB,

Boot to safe mode, command prompt only.

Run chkdsk /f

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@JPB,

Basically, the 00000007E error indicates a driver problem.

That fits with safe mode working.

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@JPB,

I to think that you have a hard drive problem and you are not likely to like this advice but there is a great hard drive utility by the name of spinrite that boot from a cd or even an old floppy that will run a complete check on your drive and repair any problem that can be repair by software.

It can be downloaded at GRC.com but it is not cheap repeat not cheap in the range of eighty dollars in fact.

I purchase the software and would never be without it as it had fixed boots problems and other hard drive problems on my computers and my wife laptop.

I suggest you might wish to go to that website and read about it to see if you wish to take the risk of it fixing your problem or not.

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@JPB,

Here is a wikipedia article on spinrite and it give information concerning freeware disk utility programs that might be of aid to you also in solving your problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinrite

1 Reply

@BillRM,

SpinRite is fine if the problem is purely software - and we don't know that's the case for JPB's computer. Best to keep it simple, read Engineer's post above:

Quote:

1. First, boot the computer into safe mode with command prompt. To do this, start the computer, and immediately begin pressing the F8 key at one second intervals. You may have to press several times until the boot menu comes up.

2. Use your arrow keys to choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt and press enter.

3. The computer will begin booting. Lots of weird looking white text will scroll by and then the computer will ask you to login or give you a box saying safe mode is running, etc.

4. Click Ok to finish loading. A black command window will appear with a c: prompt.

5. At that c: prompt, type chkdsk c:/r and press enter.

6. Check disk will start to run but then it will say:

Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)

Type Y for yes, and press enter. Then reboot the computer into normal mode. Chkdsk will start when Windows begins loading again. Let all 5 phases run and don't use or turn off the computer. (The chkdsk process may take an hour or more to finish.)

7. Chkdsk finds any corrupted files that are causing the problem and fixes them. Read the results of each phase as it finishes. During the final phase, it will notify you if it finds any corrupted files.

8. When the Check Disk is done, it will finish loading Windows.

That should work, JPB, unless the problem is mechanical - try it (can't hurt anything) and come back to post results here Smile

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

DrewDad wrote:

Do you have your installation disks?

Do you have a backup?

Yes to both. I assume you mean a data backup.

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rebooting to run chkdsk now...

1 Reply

@JPB,

Having thought about this for a few minutes, I think you really, really need to back up all of your files if you haven't already done so.

Shut down your PC.

Go buy an external hard drive, if you don't already have one.

Create an Ubuntu live boot disk. (for just a file copy) or Clonezilla boot disk (if you want to make an image of the entire partition).

Back up your system.

1 Reply

@JPB,

Quote:

Type Y for yes, and press enter. Then reboot the computer into normal mode. Chkdsk will start when Windows begins loading again. Let all 5 phases run and don't use or turn off the computer. (The chkdsk process may take an hour or more to finish.)

Got to this point but got the BSOD (same stop code) before chkdsk started running.

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@DrewDad,

too late. Now safe mode isn't coming up. It's hung up on a screen full of "multi(0)... lines. Then, about 2 minutes later something started hitting the disk hard in the background. Do you think it's running chkdsk in the background in safe mode?

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@High Seas,

Quote:

SpinRite is fine if the problem is purely software - and we don't know that's the case for JPB's computer. Best to keep it simple, read Engineer's post above:

High Seas if it is mechanical problem beyond the build in abilities of the drive to replace bad sectors with it reserves he is in deep do-do in any case however spinrite will look at the disk and if there are bad sectors it will do it best to recover the information in those sectors and then tell the hard drive control to replace the bad sectors out of it reserves sectors and place the information on the new sectors.

Take note it also boot completely independent of the OS on the hard drive.

The very high cost of the program is the only draw back to using/trying it in this case.

Hate to sound like a damn advertisement for this costly program but it had indeed handle similar problems for me.

Off hand I would place the odds of getting his system up and running with this program as at 70 percents or so.

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I appear to be back up and running. I went through the Windows Repair process on the re-installation disk. Scary! But, it worked!!! Thanks for your ideas and suggestions.

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@JPB,

Great however in case the hard drive is on it last legs I suggest you might wish to pick up a large external usb hard drive and make a complete copy of your hard drive to it.

Or at least any files on it you would not care to take a chance of losing.

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@JPB,

Now make a backup.

Carbonite, Mozy, Backblaze, etc. (better to have an off-site backup)

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@JPB,

Hello,

A couple of years ago I ran into a server getting the BSOD and rebooting, safe mode did the same thing. This was before I knew about UBCD4Win. What I ended up doing was setting my camera phone on burst which just keeps taking pictures without delay. I eventually got a nice picture of the BSOD and was able to solve the problem.

Regards
Carlow Olson

1 Reply

@Carlow Olson,

I just had my XP netbook doing reboots during start ups and only flashing the error message for a millisecond or so. Oh safe mode gave the same nonsense.

You can disable the reboot on error with xp by hitting f8 on start on and getting a menu where you can select the reboot on error as disable.

In any case one more I solve the problem by having spinrite rnn for 11 hours and repair the hard drive errors.

By the way even those I love this program and had promote it on this thread I am just a user with no financial interests in it.

0 Replies

BSOD at boot up

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