Error Loading OS And stop: 0x0000007b

[paulbelk]

Ok, Here's a perplexing one that I have never came across before.

So i've been letting my girlfriend use my PC for about a year or two now and somehow I now go to start the system and it says: Error Loading OS.

So, I get out my Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 disc and try to just do a repair. NO GO.

I get an error. stop: 0x0000007b

Can't get into safe mode
Can't even do a mobo BIOS update.
I have a disc called UBCD - Ultimate boot disk but i'm not sure how most of the app's on it work. I have been out of the loop for a few years now going to engineering school so I have forgotten a lot of the old tricks I used to know.
I have no idea what she was doing before this happened. She claims all was working fine when she shut down.

ANY help would be greatly appreciated as long as it doesn't cause' me to lose all of my info.

I have never had this much trouble.

Someone Please help.

I'm running an XFX 680I LT Mobo
4 Gig Ram
4 WD Cavier Blue 500 GB
Dual Zotac 1GB 9600 GT cards in SLI config.

I don't know what other info you would want.

 

[tigsounds]

Look in BIOS for HDD settings, being alert for SATA settings. Set to "IDE" if available.

Read this M$ bulletin..

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

If it is a desktop, have mainboard HDD controller driver floppy ready for the "Press F6 to install...."

 

[paulbelk]

I don't have another pc with a floppy. How else can I do this?

Also, my mobo wont let me change the drives to IDE.

Please give better instructions on how to do what you're talking about.

 

[tigsounds]

The problem is that you have an inaccessible boot device. The M$ article explains a couple ways this happens. I blame M$ for locking-in only a floppy drive as the source of 3rd party drivers during install/repair. They should have included a "browse" feature to locate drivers in another device.

The actual defect causing your computer to be unable to access the drive is not known, so you are stuck with figuring out if it is a lost/corrupt driver or a virus that made the drive inaccessible, or since you have 4 hard drives, the actual boot priority may have changed. I'd look at boot priority first.

The BIOS should have a boot options section, but also a hard drive priority choice. It isn't enough to select to boot from HDD, you also must select which HDD to boot from.

If all that is proper, you may need to do a slipstream repair. Enter "Slipstream" in the search box at the top of this page and you will get many good post about preparing a slipstream disk and how to use it.

 

[paulbelk]

I have attempted what you say except the slipstream approach.

I'm not sure as to whether or not that would help.

It will recognize the discs and even start to run through the process of running the install disc but as it gets into copying files it gives me that stop error.

There is no way to a back door that I can use?

I am amiss as to why I am receiving this error anyway when all was fine before.

The Ms report you sent me to is about useless. I have tried all methods available to me.

Any other suggestions.

It seems like the MBR or config.sys file may be corrupt.

 

[tigsounds]

Does the BIOS even see the drive?

 

[paulbelk]

I have been messing with this all day and night and now all of a sudden the bios no longer sees 2 of the 4 hard drives. Now I can't even get past the point of it trying to detect the IDE drives (although I have SATA). Could this be a HDD problem AND a MOBO problem or is it likely that it's just the 1st hard drive on the board has failed so it takes a long time to get past it?

I never did get past it and get into the BIOS again though.

So I decide to remove the sata cables and trade them out with new ones just in case. No dice.

This time when I reboot though I can hear the faint sound of a clicking noise coming from one of the drives but the BIOS wont load and see any of the drives.

So, now i'm wondering if it is a hard drive failure and a MOBO failure.

Can somebody give me some solutions?

 

[tigsounds]

If a hard drive fails, the POST may stall on the bad drive during detection.

Check cables, listen for spin-up.

 

[paulbelk]

Ok, so I removed the faulty hard drive and now post resumes normally.

I would like to still try to get my data off this drive and have not backed up since June. Not a whole lot has changed since then but still don't want to go through the tedious task of re-installing all the apps I have on it.

Any suggestions on determinig whether it's the PCB board or not and how I could get another one?

 

[tigsounds]

If it's not a RAID, plug good drives in where bad one's were. See what happens.

Power plugs can cause grief if they are the older 4 pin plugs. The new wide plugs are much better.

 

[paulbelk]

What wide plugs are you talking about? This system is about 3-4 years old so I would think that it should have good system wiring.

Maybe you could take a look at my system specs and determine if any good.

I was also hoping someone could help with how to prevent this in the future as I've never had it happen to me before.

I was thinking I would setup RAID 1 (on the motherboard) with 2 alike 2TB Drives. My question though is how reliable is the onboard controller going to be for my XFX 680I LT mobo and how will I know if one drive fails. If 1 drive fails then do I just need to install a new drive and let it copy to the new one?

Also, do I need to do backups still if I have a RAID 1 config?

I still have 3 other 500GB hdd's that will need to be backed up as well. Where do I put all this info?

I know this is a lot to answer but I really need some extra help here.