Windows Vista BSOD on my desktop

Question

My desktop is on the fritz; it keeps going to blue screen with the stop message of 0x0000007E immediately after the Vista loading bar, right before transitioning to the login screen.

My desktop runs on a dual-core 32-bit processor with Windows Vista Home(?) installed, 3GB RAM as two separate modules (1GB Acer module, 2GB Geil module), a low-end Sapphire ATI video card, and 320GB hard drive (partitioned into two). The C:\ partition is red lined, while the D:\ partition is still pretty empty.

On the advice of my friend, I tried:

• Restarting the system with the graphics card removed.
• Upon failure, I repeated the process removing one RAM module one at a time, but the system still failed to load. Vista would attempt to repair the system and it would initially report that the system was fixed, but Vista never really fixed the problem.
• After removing the memory modules, Vista started to report its inability to fix the problem.
• I tried running in Safe Mode and the driver listing would always stop at crcdisk.sys.
• I ran memory diagnostics using the Windows memory diagnostic tool found in the screen after Vista's failed attempt to fix the problem, as well as the memory testing tool found in Ubuntu's Live CD. Both tests succeeded.
• Finally, I managed to install Ubuntu 9.10 on my external hard disk and run it on the broken computer possibly implying that it's not a hardware failure, though I haven't had a chance to check the internal sound card.

The problem details are as such:

Problem Event Name : StartupRepairV2
Problem Signature:
01: AutoFailover
02: (vista's version number?)
03: 6
04: 720907
05: 0x7e
06: 0x7e
07: 0
08: 2
09: WrpRepair
10: 0
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID 1033

Root cause found in startup repair was:

unknown bugcheck: bugcheck 7e.
parameters =  0xc0000005, 0x8284f872, 0x8d1b3a68, 0x8d1b3764

I do not have access to safe mode, but I do have access to a Command Prompt. Also, the problem began with my brother. He was using Facebook, then the PC just died with a BSOD. Any corrective advice would be appreciated!

Answer 1

0xc0000005 Is usually a fault with writing to RAM, or when a program tries to access data on a memory stick in a faulty way, or access data that is already not there.

If you've overclocked the computer, try going down with the clock and seeing if it helps.

Also, try running each memory stick with Prime95, and then all of them together. if you don't feel like crashing your vista everytime with prime, you can use the one on Ultimate boot cd 5 (google)

Answer 2

Like abutbul, I suspect your RAM is faulty. If it's an option, swap out both memory sticks with fresh, matched pair.

RAM is cheap and matched RAM (I've heard) is better. You might also seek this out as an opportunity to max out your PC's RAM.

Faulty ram often causes a computer to exhibit undesired, but random behavior. The problems are generally not consistent because each time your computer loads, different components are put in to different area's of RAM. Not all of the RAM is used when the computer is running, so when a small section is bad, an error or problem will only occasionally cause a problem. On the other hand, if the bad RAM happens to be towards the beginning of the addressable space, more problems might be exhibited.