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Windows XP Dilemma - Stop: 0x7b BSOD

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by kennyschachat 3 views

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System Hardware:
Dell Dimension 8300 Pentium 4 3.2ghz / 2gb RAM / Seagate Sata: 120gb and 200gb, Seagate 500mb external eSata via Promise eSata PCI card, Nvidia 6200, etc.

Windows XP SP2 (Dell OEM) with latest updates as of July 2007.

Origin: Power Outage (OK, I admit that I'm a klutz and that I accidentally hit the power strip power switch, while I was crawling around behind the PC, plugging in a printer)

Subsequently:

When I boot XP I'm getting a BSOD with the usual warning and then this Stop message:

STOP 0x0000007B (0xBACBF524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000).

In normal boot, this appears a few seconds after the Windows logo.

In Safe mode it shows a couple of dozen drivers being loaded but it crashes after dontgo.sys. (this is the Promise eSata controller driver).

Using Recovery Console, disabling dontgo.sys and removing the Promise eSata card, it still crashes immediately after the previous driver ( agp44.sys) is displayed. Disabling agp44.sys has crash after the next previous driver, etc. Also removed the Promise controller.

I moved the boot drive to a very similar system and it behaved exactly the same way.

Here's some other things that I've discovered about the current state of the system:

Extensive testing has not indicated any drive or hardware problems.
When booting from a Windows boot CD (see below) the file systems on all drives appear to be fine.

I get the same behavior in all XP boot modes (Safe, Last Known, etc.)

I tried some utilities that restored previous Registry states - no change. Note that this was not a full System Restore i.e. it didn't restore DLLs, etc.).

Questions:

Is there anyway to determine (even approximately) the loading order of drivers? It seems that if I could determine the next driver that is going to be loaded after the last one is displayed in Safe mode, I would know where the problem is stemming from. Is that a reasonable assumption?

Does the fact that the whole range of Windows boot options are available and that these two dozen or so drivers are apparently being loaded as displayed in Safe Mode, indicate that the problem is NOT with the boot configurations and that the problem is within the Windows configuration? Or could there still be boot/mbr problems?

I have avoided trying fixmbr via the Recovery Console, out of a concern for messing up Dell's proprietary partitions, etc. What would be worst case with trying fixmbr, bootcfg, etc? I tried enabling boot logging but that apparently doesn't kick in before it crashes.

Is there any way to run a full System Restore on a non-booting Win install? Why oh why doesn't System Restore run from Recovery Console? Is is possible to examine the Restore points and manually recreate a System Restore?

The MS web site seems to indicate that it's possible via WMI scripting to do a remote System Restore. Does that mean it will work on a non-booting installation or does that mean that it will only work on a remote, running windows system?

My current next step is a Windows Repair Install, which may work but will leave the Windows in an out of date state and require a lot of updating and then it still may not be completely stable. Last resort is a complete reformat and reinstall. But before I do that I'd like to see if I've exhausted all simpler approaches.

All of the files are backed up, so I'm not in a panic about losing data. OTOH, resorting to a complete XP reinstall is very unappealing. It would take many days, even weeks, to reinstall and configure all of the software.

Any suggestions or guidance would be greatly appreciated!

-Kenny

12 replies

by kennyschachat

I forgot to mention that I used Ultimate Boot CD for Windows to help diagnose the situation. This is a free project that guides users in building a bootable CD version of Windows from their own Windows installation CD. The UBCD4Win version includes a plethora of free diagnostic and repair utilities. I can't recommend this highly enough. It's based on the original Bart PE project but I found the UBCD4Win version to be much more user friendly:
http://www.ubcd4win.com

by ic-it

If there is a chance that the BIOS reset to a default configuration.
Try using F12 (I think) to view the Boot order, it maybe that the IDE chain jumped in.

by zahn

Have you tried going into the system BIOS (hit F2 at Dell logo screen) and seeing if there is a "Drives" section and and "SATA Operation" entry under that?

I've seen a 7B stop error on Dimension 8400's that won't boot as the onboard RAID controller has gotten set to incorrect mode.

Try changing the RAID mode to different choices and see if that makes any difference.

Worth a try as it only takes a few minutes to test this out.

If not, here is link to MS Knowledgebase article about that error:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324103

by corkymuldoon

Hi, I received this same stop error recently because of CD driver issues. Nothing worked (normal, safe mode, LKGF). I finally resorted to running Windows repair, essentially reinstalling the OS. This is the second repair option, proceeding as if you're going to do a zero-based (reformat) installation, but at the selection screen for the partition where to install Windows, hit "R." This will reinstall Windows but won't delete any data or previously-installed programs. They'll be myriad patches and possibly a service pack to reinstall when you're done, but this worked for me.

Good luck!

by proteck

Hi, in cases like this when the problem started after a power outage (accidental or not) boot up with your Windows cd, go to the recovery console. At the prompt enter "chkdsk /r" (without the " "). When it's done it will most likely find and fix errors. Run it again. If no more errors are found, type exit and remove cd and boot up from hard drive. This always does the trick. Good luck!

by fixit

Try booting the XP cd and going to the repair console. From there run checkdisk (chkdisk i believe). It sounds like you were wrighting to your HDD when you shut the power off.
Just a thought, it has worked for me in the past. Good luck!

by george

Kenny, here are my comments:
You ask:
?Is there anyway to determine (even approximately) the loading order of drivers??

There are drivers and services. Up to a certain point, they might be the same for all installations, but after that it is different, depending on your configuration.

?It seems that if I could determine the next driver that is going to be loaded after the last one is displayed in Safe mode, I would know where the problem is stemming from. Is that a reasonable assumption??

The last driver on that list is not the last driver which was installed, but the driver which is going to be installed. This is to help you figure out what driver has a problem. The list stops at the faulty driver (service).

To sort out the MBR problem, try to boot from other disk (other OS) and see if you can access this disk from there. If you cannot, then MBR is affected. A good solution to fix it is not using fixmbr, or fixboot from RC, but trying to use the disk manufacture utilities (MaxBlast, SeaTools?).

As you said, the second last solution (before reformatting) would be to repair XP and then update it. I think this is going to work, I used it many times.

Good luck!

by kennyschachat

HI,

First of all, thanks to everyone who responded with your helpful suggestions. Having been working away at this problem for quite some time, I had already tried those approaches:

- Chkdsk found 0 problems
- Thorough inspection of the BIOS didn't show any problems
- Hardware was fine, including testing with 100% new memory chips
- Tried the hard disk in a similar PC (Dimension 8400) and it produced the same error
-Thoroughly investigated the MS support sites, including TechNET. I will say that even thought I consider myself fairly advanced in terms of PC's in general, MS desktop OS's and XP in particular, I learned a lot additional detailed technical information about XP.
-The same for the many user forums and tech support sites and I'd have to place Tech Republic at the top of the list.
-Found lots of very useful tools, many of the free, though none of the fixed the problem
-All Recovery Console approaches though none of them worked

My current conclusion is that there seems to be a lack of knowledge and/or lack of accessible information about some aspects of the Windows boot process. I think MS should be pressured to provide better information and hooks for tech support people to diagnose difficult problems. I find it very hard to accept that the exact driver/service boot sequence can't be determined for a given installation. Or maybe it can, but I couldn't find that information (I'm still interested, if someone has more info about this).

The only approach that might have worked would have been to use either a hardware debugger or perhaps the MS software kernel debugger (available with the Driver SDK) but even then, the OS may not have booted far enough for it to kick in. Also, this would have required a second PC and either a serial or firewire connection PLUS very thorough knowledge or Hex dumps, etc. I almost went this route but decided that it wasn't worth it, esp. since it may not have even worked.

So, in the end, my experiment at trying to precisely determine the point of failure didn't work out. I opted for the Repair install, which did the trick in terms of getting XP back up and running and MS should get credit where's it's for providing this.
OF course, there's a number annoying issues that came with this: the security permissions were quite a mess and Windows Update did not work. The solution involved delving into HK-Root permissions, registering WUpdate DLL's, etc. and I won't feel that the system is stable for while. I'm fully prepared for a format and clean install if this flakes out.

Any other comments are most welcome!

by kennyschachat

Your comment that the last driver on the list that is displayed is the next driver to be installed and is therefore the source of the problem doesn't match my experience. It certainly wasn't true in my case and for several other computers that I've worked on. I'm not even sure that the last driver displayed is the next one to be loaded. Would you mind directing me to a source for this info? Thanks!

by jperry

My problem was similar but originally showed itself as a normal boot but with no keyboard or mouse. after getting to the point that you were (safe boot stopping at dontgo.sys) it stopped UNTIL.... I left it sit at that point and after something over 30 min. it booted to safe mode and thereafter works OK

Didnt notice date---assume it works by now

by kennyschachat

Thanks to jperry for replying, even at this late date.

Although it's now too late for me to put it to use, I finally did find a tool that apparently shows the exact order that drivers and services are loaded in XP. Of course it should come as no surprise that the source of this *ESSENTIAL* information comes, not from Microsoft, but from Systinternals. The utility is called Load Order:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897416.aspx

Of well, I guess we have to give credit to MS for having the smarts to buy out Systinternals and to keep the invaluable tools that they developed available. I think that MS users everywhere lost something by not having Mark R. operating as an independent voice though hopefully his critical eyes and sharp technical skills will be put to good use at MS and will find their way to users via improvements in Windows.

Speaking of which, an acquaintance of mine just accepted a full time job with MS's advanced OS group, after 16 years of working on open source, startups, etc. His project is somewhat related to the Singularity OS project at MS but it's more practical and more likely to find it's way into a real product, at least according to what little bit he's able to discuss. Anyway, it's somewhat inspiring to think that MS may be putting some of it's nearly limitless resources toward actually advancing the state of their OS's. Call me an optimist ;-).

Here's his blog, which is full of interesting links to OS technology discussions and research papers:

http://blog.robjsoftware.org

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