wall of information in Windows NT 4.0 to the comparatively sparse message employed by modern versions of Windows.
These two errors have similar causes and the same troubleshooting steps apply to both of them. These stop codes always occur during the startup process. When you encounter one of these stop codes, the following has happened:
- The system has completed the Power-On Self-Test (POST).
- The system has loaded NTLDR and transferred control of the startup process to NTOSKRNL (the kernel).
- NTOSKRNL is confused. Either it cannot find the rest of itself, or it cannot read the file system at the location it believes it is stored.
When troubleshooting this error, your task is to find out why the Windows kernel is confused and fix the cause of the confusion.
Things to check
- The SATA controller configuration in the system BIOS If the SATA controller gets toggled from ATA to AHCI mode (or vice versa), then Windows will not be able to talk to the SATA controller because the different modes require different 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:
- Dat