Blue Screen on Boot - Quick Transition

[duwrt]

I'm fairly new to building systems, but I'm working on a HTPC and have run into an O/S issue. Brief details:

- I'm working with a brand new mother board/ & CPU.

- Unable to boot into OS, even in safe modes. As a result, I can't generate a boot log file to assess the issue.

3- In the early stages of loading the OS, a blue screen appears with an error code. Unfortunately the screen transitions too quickly to read.

Is there anything I can do to view the error code, or verify where the issue resides?

[DjLizard]

Tap F8 before the Windows logo appears and choose "Disable automatic restart on system failure". You'll then be able to read the STOP code. You can also attach the hard drive to a working machine and see if there is a Minidump folder under the Windows folder. If there are files in Minidump, post them on the 'net somewhere and I can debug them for you (if necessary).

[duwrt]

Thanks for help.

I will check for a miniDump in the morning. The current code I'm getting is "stop: 0x00000007b (0xFAFAC528,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)".

Can you suggest any good reference site to work with error codes.

Thanks again
duwrt

[DjLizard]

Not really any particular resources, except Google.

7b = INACESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE. It's usually caused by a bad path in BOOT.INI, a missing storage driver (like installing Windows on a SATA drive without hitting F6 during setup to specify a SATA driver), or other miscellaneous controller issues. Is this a SATA drive? If so, did you use a driver during setup? If not, you may need to make a floppy disk with the SATA driver on it. You can usually find a disk maker on the motherboard CD (OK choice), and at the motherboard manufacturer's website (better choice).

[duwrt]

Good to know. Strange thing is, the drive is a regular IDE type and when I connect it to another machine, it boots without issue. I'm goint to check the BIOS and see if I have it set to boot from the right source.

I don't have any other drives attached at this point (floppy or CD), any chance that is causing an issue ?

duwrt

[DjLizard]

Wow. Okay...
Does this motherboard have RAID capability? (and what motherboard is it?) If so, try disabling it in the BIOS, or moving the hard drive to a non-RAID IDE connector (usually IDE RAID has two separate IDE channels for RAID capability and two for non-RAID --- move to the non-RAID, if that's an option).

[duwrt]

Gr8 idea...Never occured to me...it does have RAID capability. I'll give that a shot. The board is a BIOstar TForce 6100-939.