Hi folks, can anyone please help me, my dad’s computer has gone on the blink and is showing a blue screen with a stop message 0x0000007E and some other numbers that look the same, we don’t know what to do but have tried safe mode but it just gets back to this screen. Please help two computer numptys out, I’ve looked online but can’t understand the technical talk. Many thanks in advance.

Try disconnecting from mains, removing the memory and reseating.

Does it beep at all when booting up?

No beeping, just goes to an options page( black screen) with start normally, safe mode etc and when we try them we get the blue screen.

We have taken out the memory and re-seated it but still get the blue screen. We both feel like IT specialists now though after doing it!!

Have a look at the MS comments on a 7E error. Web site: here Looks like a wonky kernel thread.

Is a driver ????.SYS mentioned?

Thanks Adam w, I’ll look tomorrow as I’ve had to go home and leave it. I think he may have used all the memory up as he spends all his time putting cd’s onto it!!! Could this cause the problem? It’s about 6 years old now. It’s his 70th birthday next week so I might treat the old boy to a new one, he’s gutted though at the moment as he thinks he’s lost all his music and photo’s as he’s not very good at backing things up!!

*Cougar bump*

Those STOP messages are not helpful. It could be anything. As AdamW says it could be a driver, but the usual way of trouble shooting that one is to boot in Safe Mode – which apparently you can’t do. Will it boot in “Last Known Good Configuration”? If you have any external devices attached, disconnect them and try again.

To be honest though, at work we normally reimage them after a BSOD.

If you do decide to go for another machine, if you buy a USB disk caddy you should be able to pop the old disk into that and connect to it from the new machine to restore saved files. They will still be there, it’s only the operating system that has popped.

Cougar, Cougar, Cougar… *

* used to work for “Brant”

A cheap USB hard drive is quick and easy way to back up your important files once you get it up and running again

another option is for you to create a linux bootable DVD

go to linuxmint or ubuntu.org and download the ISO file and use the DVD creator to create the DVD with that image

put that into your dads computer and boot from DVD (the computer may check this when you start the PC or you may need to press F2 to force it to look at the CD before going to the hard disk to boo)

then use linux to look at your dad’s hard disk to see that it’s not completely full, you may be able to use a USB stick to back up the important stuff and even delete non-required files to free up some space

you may even find some free disk checker tools in linux to scan and see if that pops up anything….

Very often a sign of a faulty hard drive, download a Seatools CD/DVD ISO and burn to disc as an image on another computer. Put it in the wonky PC, make sure it’s set to boot from CD first in the bios and run a full test.

Cougar, Cougar, Cougar… *

Hiya!

Questions, then answers, then advice.

First, what OS? Is it XP?

Do you have the relevant Windows disc?

Can you get to Safe Mode With Command Prompt?

Do you have the option to take the disk out and mount it as a secondary on another PC?

Has anything changed on it recently? What was the last thing he did before it worked?

Where are you geographically?

Oh, and,

he’s gutted though at the moment as he thinks he’s lost all his music and photo’s as he’s not very good at backing things up!!

His music and photos are almost certainly fine. We can worry about that in a bit, if we can’t resurrect it; but we need to get some form of access to it first.

Use this incident as a gentle reminder to back up anything important. Storage is cheap, data recovery is expensive.