Trying to Format/Recover with OS Disc, getting blue screen.

chancam7chancam7 Missouri
edited July 2009 in Science & Tech
Hello. I am trying to format and recover my computer with Win XP. Computer caught some bugs while I was in Iraq and it was home and I just want to start fresh. It's just used for gaming and has nothing I need to save on it. I boot from the XP disc, it goes through its setup and then I get the blue screen. "STOP: 0x0000007B" Is there a way I can just format it without the disc and the reinstall the OS with the disc? Thanks for any assistance you can provide.

Comments

  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited July 2009
    You need some kind of boot disk to load into a shell to be able to format it.

    If you can boot up with the XP cd and get into Recovery console that will bring you to a shell prompt and you can format the drive there by typing in.
    FORMAT C: /FS:NTFS

    Then reboot and try to reinstall.
  • chancam7chancam7 Missouri
    edited July 2009
    I cannot get to the recovery console. Get blue screen before I get there.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited July 2009
    Could be a bad windows disc, could be hardware problems.

    So first I suggest getting a copy of Memtest86 and using it to test your ram. Alternatively get a copy of Ubnutu the live cd has memtest86 on it. But it's also handy to test other parts of your hardware by seeing if it can boot up into Ubuntu. That way it'll test your video card, network card and you can check out your hardddrive as well.
  • chancam7chancam7 Missouri
    edited July 2009
    Thank you. I had a thought about just pulling the HD, which is only a 250G w/ XP, and installing a 1T HD. I would want to go ahead and have Vista on it since I am more comfortable with it now. Would it be that difficult to replace the HD and install the OS on it? There's nothing on the old hard drive that I want, file wise, so starting fresh wouldn't bother me at all.
  • MAGICMAGIC Doot Doot Furniture City, Michigan Icrontian
    edited July 2009
    try pulling a stick of memory out and trying again. if you are crashing before you even start installing i doubt its the hard drive. And, no swapping hard drives and installing an os is very simple.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited July 2009
    I agree with Magic. It's likely not your harddrive that is the problem, if it's hardware issue. It sounds like it's crashing before it even really does anything regarding your harddrive. Use the Memtest program I linked to and see if your RAM is bad. Then we can work from there narrowing down the possibilities.
  • chancam7chancam7 Missouri
    edited July 2009
    It will actually boot up and run windows, so the memory is good. I have some sort of bug on the computer. It won't connect to the internet so I can update spyware/virus programs and it keeps trying to send error reports for things I've never heard of. I was just thinking that since it had no files I want on it, and I wanted a bigger hard drive anyway, that it may be easier to just swap HDs out rather than fix the one I don't want. Would it be a big problem you think? It's a Dell XPS 710. I know, ewe Dell, I've always liked it though :) Also it only has 2G of RAM so that was getting swapped out/upgraded as well. How difficult would all this be if I just ordered A HD, OS, and 4 or 6G of RAM and wanted to install it myself. I have added extra RAM and HDs before, just never swapped it all out fresh.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited July 2009
    If you've added ram and hd's before then that shouldn't be a problem. But keep in mind that you are limited to how much ram you can put into a machine, first if it's a 32bit OS you are using then 3gb is the max it will look at so having 4 or 6 gigs of ram won't help. If you have a 64bit OS installed it can see more ram, but your machine may have a limit to how much ram it can actually use. I don't know the answer to that question for that machine. But it should be answered on Dell's site.

    If you have an xp cd already you should be able to do a clean install with it on your current system. DO you have an actual windows cd or is it the recovery cd's that shipped with your computer?

    One final note if you are planning on getting a new OS get windows 7, anything else at this point is pointless. As to which version of windows 7 that's up to you.
  • chancam7chancam7 Missouri
    edited July 2009
    Thank you very much for the information/advice. I appreciate it. I'm going to get to work on all this and update as soon as I think I have gotten somewhere, or nowhere :) Thanks again.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited July 2009
    Minor point of correction kryyst... If you're using Windows XP 32-bit, it will recognize 3.25GB of RAM using physical address extension... Or at least it does on my system.
  • lordbeanlordbean Ontario, Canada
    edited July 2009
    One thing that floats to my brain from somewhere... if you have any SATA controllers on your motherboard that are in AHCI or RAID mode, it helps if you switch them to IDE for the windows XP installer disc. It isn't always capable of successfully booting from an AHCI SATA optical drive.
  • chancam7chancam7 Missouri
    edited July 2009
    Ok, bought a full version of Vista and did a reinstall with that. Everything seems to be working fine. Thank you for all the assistance. Note: tried to switch out the hard drive and I think I got a bad one so I decided to try my fix on the old HD.
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