I'm getting a Stop 7B error, but only when I have additional drives connected

Question

A few days back, I got a nasty piece of malware which I am fairly certain I managed to remove. Initially the main problem was that the computer would halt with a Stop 7B error, but after lots of hair pulling I tried disconnecting hard drives.

There is a system drive, and two additional drives that are just storage. If I have either of these additional drives connected (one is IDE, one is SATA, and I had the SATA one connected using a USB enclosure as well) I get the 7B error again, can't boot either into safe mode or normal mode.

I can hook up the drives using an enclosure and see the files just fine. I just can't boot with the drives connected.

Anybody have any ideas?

Answer 1

Assuming you are getting the 7B error on boot, try changing the boot order in your BIOS so that the OS drive is first in the priorities and that it is set to the right class code. (Try going away from RAID or AHCI)