drivers. Try toggling the SATA controller mode in the BIOS.
- RAID settings You may receive this error if you've been experimenting with the RAID controller settings. Try changing the RAID settings back to Autodetect (usually accurate).
- Improperly or poorly seated cabling Try reseating the data cables that connect the drive and its controller at both ends.
- Hard drive failure Run the built-in diagnostics on the hard drive. Remember: Code 7 signifies correctable data corruption, not disk failure.
- File system corruption Launch the recovery console from the Windows installation disc and run chkdsk /f /r.
- Improperly configured BOOT.INI (Windows Vista). If you have inadvertently erased or tinkered with the boot.ini file, you may receive stop code 0x7B during the startup process. Launch the recovery console from the Windows installation disc and run BOOTCFG /REBUILD
This stop code indicates the NTFS file system driver encountered a situation it could not handle, and is almost always caused by 3 things:
- Data corruption on the disk
- Data corruption in memory
- The system completely running out of memory (this typically only happens on heavily-loaded servers)
Things to check
- Reseat the memory and all drive data cables to eliminate data corruption issues stemming from poorly or improperly seated hardware.
- Run a complete memory and hard drive diagnostic. The quick test will not be thorough enough here. You need to run the full system diagnostic.
- If those diagnostics pass, run a full file system check from the Recovery Console (chkdsk /f /r) to detect and (potentially) fix any corrupted data.
- If none of the above solves the issue, reinstall Windows.
- If that does not fix the issue, replace the hard drive.
These two errors indicate that a program running in the kernel encountered an unexpected condition it could not recover from. They have identical troubleshooting and resolution steps, and you will probably need to use the Windows Debugger to find out what caused the error.
Things to check
- If the Blue Screen message mentions a driver or library file, figure out what driver or application that file is part of and update or disable it.
- Update the system BIOS to the latest available revision.
- Uninstall any recently installed programs, and roll-back any recently installed drivers.
- Run diagnostics on the computer's memory.
This stop code means the system tried to access a nonexistent piece of memory, almost always due to:
- A driver trying to access a page of memory that is not present
- A system service (ex. virus scanner) failing in an exceptional way
- Faulty or incorrectly seated memory
- Corrupted data on the hard drive
Use the Windows Debugger to pinpoint the exact cause of these errors.
Things to check
- If the Blue Screen error mentions a driver or library file, figure out what driver or program the file is a part of and either upgrade to the latest version or uninstall the driver or program.
- If the error happens during the startup process, try booting to the Last Known Good Configuration.
- If the error started appearing after a program or driver was installed, uninstall that program or driver.
- Try running a full hard drive and memory diagnostic after reseating the memory and hard drive data cables.
This stop code indicates a driver tried to access a certain area of memory when it should not have, meaning there is a flaw in the driver itself. The goal of your troubleshooting is to find that driver and either disable or replace it. Use the Windows Debugger to troubleshoot this error.
Without the debugger, you are limited to uninstalling/updating/rolling back the driver that contains the driver file the Blue Screen mentions.
This Blue Screen error indicates that a device driver-almost always a video card driver-is stuck waiting for something (usually a hardware operation) to happen. Most of you have probably seen nv4_disp.sys
associated with this Blue Screen.
Things to check:
- Ensure the video drivers are updated to the latest Dell version.
- The system BIOS is fully up-to-date.
- If both the video 