VERY Critical XP Professional SP3 Problem

[wgnoyes]

Here's how this merry-go-round has proceeded.

1. Nov 30th: I'm running happily and suddenly crash with a blue screen 0x07b 0xC034 stop. When I reboot, I get the same thing. IMMEDIATELY! That is, the XP start screen starts, and before I even get the first damned tick on the blue progress bar at the bottom, it crashes with the same thing. No safe mode, none of that works. I went into all the XP recovery console stuff, did chkdsk, fixmbr, etc, etc, to no avail. I happen to have a norton ghost backup of the entire volume from some days back. I decide I have to regen from nothing. I might as well take advantage of the situation and get a bigger hard drive.
   
2. I go buy a new sata hard drive and install it as the primary, and swap the current hosed system over to the secondary. I gen XP Professional from nothing on the new drive, and it's running. And yes, I have to reinstall all my damned apps, which is a huge hassle because of activation considerations. I take a norton ghost backup of the now secondary drive as is, and then restore the secondary drive from the previously mentioned backup I have from before Nov 30. I bring over my data and try to go on with life. This could be a good thing, I think. That previous operating system was shipped with the computer in 2005 and had been running for 4 years.
   
3. Dec 10th: I don't like the crackling I'm hearing on my speakers (and that was happening before, too, but I didn't do this then) so I try to update my soundblaster audigy drivers from Microsoft update (they say they have a more current version). That process crashes half-way through. I reboot into safe mode (worked this time) and deleted the sound card from the hardware manager. Then reboot normally, and he goes through the procedure of installing the sound card with existing drivers. Sounds great now, rich and vibrant. (My huge collection of classical music in iTunes is important to me!)
   
4. Dec 11th: Norton AV wants to reboot. I do, and 0x07B 0xC034 crash. Same situation. Nothing works. You can google those stop words all you want and gets hundreds and HUNDREDS!!! of hits and not see one DAMED SOLUTION! I even tried expertexchange.com. They claimed they had the answer, and would show it to you if you signed up as a premiere user. Deperate, I did, and they showed the "solution" which simply and mockingly said the thread had been abandoned as unanswered. Enraged beyond words, I cancelled my subscription immediately and warned them in writing in the most severe terms to not even THINK about charging my card.
   
5. I find on exploring about a bit that F12 when booting this Dell gives you a boot menu, showing both hard drives. For giggles, I try booting off the previous bad crashed system. THE DAMN THING WORKS NOW!!!! But THAT'S not my production system anymore; I've got over a week's worth of new work on the new larger crashed system now.
   
6. And then I glance at the "windows didn't start normally" form you get which offers you different options, including safe and safe networking, and there's a "user last good configuration" line I've never bothered with (mainly because I had the underlying feature that saves those levelsets turned off in the operating system before for performance considerations, but hadn't turned it off yet on the new install) and tried. The system came up! That's friday night.
   
7. I don't touch it at all saturday; it sits and idles all day long. Sunday, Dec 13th, here's NAV wanting to reboot for maintenance. I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN a full volume backup first (back it up before screwing with it), but I didn't. I rebooted. 07B C034 crash!!!! More recovery console nonsense, to no avail. The so-called recovery console is a cruel joke. I can still boot off the formerly bad now-secondary drive from F12.
   

Sorry in advance for the bad internet ettiquete, but...

I AM VERY FRUSTRATED!!!

This HAS to be something stupid! This HAS to be something totally illiterate that maybe I've done and don't know it! I can accept that. But there HAS to be a simpler answer than "bad luck, old man, reformat your hard drive" for the second time in two weeks. There HAS to be! I simply CANNOT stomach rebuilding this system twice in 10 days.

And not to encourage the Apple crowd who is simply going to say "get a mac" (that's not helpful!), but I'm really starting to wonder if they have the right idea after all. (Linux isn't a consideration, so please don't suggest that either.)

If anyone out there has a way to fix this problem, please, PLEASE!!!!! tell me what it is! This system HAS to work!!

Edited December 14, 2009 by wgnoyes

[Merlin Orr]

No answer but I am signing out of everything and doing a full backup. Right now.

[kgunz11]

First off, get rid of Norton. It's the lamest PoS I have ever seen in my life. Completely remove it, reboot, and install Kaspersky. You'll NEVER have to look back again.

[briansea2]

Here's how this merry-go-round has proceeded.

1. Nov 30th: I'm running happily and suddenly crash with a blue screen 0x07b 0xC034 stop. When I reboot, I get the same thing. IMMEDIATELY! That is, the XP start screen starts, and before I even get the first damned tick on the green progress bar at the bottom, it crashes with the same thing. No safe mode, none of that works. I went into all the XP recovery console stuff, did chkdsk, fixmbr, etc, etc, to no avail. I happen to have a norton ghost backup of the entire volume from some days back. I decide I have to regen from nothing. I might as well take advantage of the situation and get a bigger hard drive.
   
2. I go buy a new sata hard drive and install it as the primary, and swap the current hosed system over to the secondary. I gen XP Professional from nothing on the new drive, and it's running. And yes, I have to reinstall all my damned apps, which is a huge hassle because of activation considerations. I take a norton ghost backup of the now secondary drive as is, and then restore the secondary drive from the previously mentioned backup I have from before Nov 30. I bring over my data and try to go on with life. This could be a good thing, I think. That previous operating system was shipped with the computer in 2005 and had been running for 4 years.
   
3. Dec 10th: I don't like the crackling I'm hearing on my speakers (and that was happening before, too, but I didn't do this then) so I try to update my soundblaster audigy drivers from Microsoft update (they say they have a more current version). That process crashes half-way through. I reboot into safe mode (worked this time) and deleted the sound card from the hardware manager. Then reboot normally, and he goes through the procedure of installing the sound card with existing drivers. Sounds great now, rich and vibrant. (My huge collection of classical music in iTunes is important to me!)
   
4. Dec 11th: Norton AV wants to reboot. I do, and 0x07B 0xC034 crash. Same situation. Nothing works. You can google those stop words all you want and gets hundreds and HUNDREDS!!! of hits and not see one DAMED SOLUTION! I even tried expertexchange.com. They claimed they had the answer, and would show it to you if you signed up as a premiere user. Deperate, I did, and they showed the "solution" which simply and mockingly said the thread had been abandoned as unanswered. Enraged beyond words, I cancelled my subscription immediately and warned them in writing in the most severe terms to not even THINK about charging my card.
   
5. I find on exploring about a bit that F12 when booting this Dell gives you a boot menu, showing both hard drives. For giggles, I try booting off the previous bad crashed system. THE DAMN THING WORKS NOW!!!! But THAT'S not my production system anymore; I've got over a week's worth of new work on the new larger crashed system now.
   
6. And then I glance at the "windows didn't start normally" form you get which offers you different options, including safe and safe networking, and there's a "user last good configuration" line I've never bothered with (mainly because I had the underlying feature that saves those levelsets turned off in the operating system before for performance considerations, but hadn't turned it off yet on the new install) and tried. The system came up! That's friday night.
   
7. I don't touch it at all saturday; it sits and idles all day long. Sunday, Dec 13th, here's NAV wanting to reboot for maintenance. I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN a full volume backup first (back it up before screwing with it), but I didn't. I rebooted. 07B C034 crash!!!! More recovery console nonsense, to no avail. The so-called recovery console is a cruel joke. I can still boot off the formerly bad now-secondary drive from F12.
   

Sorry in advance for the bad internet ettiquete, but...

I AM VERY FRUSTRATED!!!

This HAS to be something stupid! This HAS to be something totally illiterate that maybe I've done and don't know it! I can accept that. But there HAS to be a simpler answer than "bad luck, old man, reformat your hard drive" for the second time in two weeks. There HAS to be! I simply CANNOT stomach rebuilding this system twice in 10 days.

And not to encourage the Apple crowd who is simply going to say "get a mac" (that's not helpful!), but I'm really starting to wonder if they have the right idea after all. (Linux isn't a consideration, so please don't suggest that either.)

If anyone out there has a way to fix this problem, please, PLEASE!!!!! tell me what it is! This system HAS to work!!

Moving your new work from one HD to the other should be real easy if you can see both in "my Computer!Can you ? I would call norton and see if they will help you remove the files that were in the last update, to see if that helps. If you can get it too boot into windows w/the new HD or the other one for that matter, you can do a restore to a date prior to update. Same Problem with two os installs may be hardware or drivers not OS. Not much help I know, is this your only PC? wish I could be more help

[kgunz11]

Norton seems to be causing the conflict. Get rid of it and move on to better protection.

[wgnoyes]

First off, get rid of Norton. It's the lamest PoS I have ever seen in my life. Completely remove it, reboot, and install Kaspersky. You'll NEVER have to look back again.

Oh, okay, good. Um.... how do I get past the immediate 07B stop to actually boot the system so that I can take off NAV? Remember, this is an almost immediate blue screen stop. The Windows XP startup screen hasn't even finished fading in yet!

Edited December 14, 2009 by wgnoyes

[wgnoyes]

Norton seems to be causing the conflict. Get rid of it and move on to better protection.

I don't think so. I think it's the ms-originated soundblaster audigy card drivers that started this circus. (The system was fine thursday night until I tried to update the sound card drivers.) I'm running norton on 5 other systems and it runs well and fast. Nonetheless, taking NAV off may be worth trying.... IF I could actually get the system up, that is. The 07B stop is the IMMEDIATE problem that MUST be resolved before doing anything else.

To answer the other reply, yes, I can see everything on the new hard drive from the old mysteriously restored system. I could before. (And the old system is also happily running NAV, by the way.) That's how I got my data over to the new larger drive the first time. But I want the new system on the new drive to work; I DON'T want to regen it yet again. I simply cannot accept that the only response to a 07B C034 stop is to reformat.

Edited December 14, 2009 by wgnoyes

[D.Hayden]

Bill.. there used to be a way to start Windows, and it would ask driver by driver if you wanted to run it.. it's been a while since I've done that, I don't even know if XP retains it, but that might be somewhere to look?

[raz-0]

Norton anti virus is a POS. Ditch it. Pretty much anything form norton these days is total crap. About the only thing I see being used in a production environment with proper desktop support is norton ghost.

During boot, hit F8 to get the windows boot options. One of them should allow you to see the full list of drivers loading as they load. You can then see if/where they are crapping out.

If the drivers crash, the last one was your culprit. Boot into safe mode (anothe f8 option), and find the latest and greatest to fix it. Go to the website of the manufacturer of said device to get it if possible. If you make it through the drivers, try booting to safe mode.

If you make it through the list of drivers and crash, but boot into safe mode ok, then it is something in windows startup. Once in safe mode, launch msconfig, which should allow you to see what is auto starting. Turn them all off and reboot. Turn one on at a time until you can't boot.

[JThompson]

Same problem popped up with two drives, therefore I would rule out a drive issue. I would pop the ram and replace it if you have it, otherwise if you have two sticks try popping out the slot 0 ram and setting it aside and then move the other over to that slot. try and boot, no? swap with the one you set aside. Making sure to only have one in each time you try. also look for overheats, are all the fans turning? Power supply, video, cpu? not clogged up with shit? Take every damn card out of the machine and unplug everything you don't need to boot. dump cdrons dvds whatever.... reduce it down to bare bones... does it boot?

If none of that does it you either have a boot virus, or a controller or on board ram issues, in which case you need a new board.

You may also need to go into cmos and check the setting for the drives... seeif there is an autodetect on anything scsi. I've seen machine crash and the setting needed to use a scsi sata drive where changed and it could not find the boot sector and this caused the same error you have. I've seen these machine crash and reset to defaults that do not work for the SATA drive. My system does this! I get the same error you have and need to change my settings in cmost to get it going.

do that and report back and we'll try some more stuff....

JT

Edited December 14, 2009 by JThompson

[islandtime]

First: Kgunz is right, get rid of Norton and install Kapersky or AVG.

Second: Watch your credit card for strange charges. I had problems after trying Experts Exchange in the past.

It sounds like your system is corrupt and as a result the ghost images are as well. Good news is you can use the file browser in ghost to browse the backups you've made and recover your files without having to restore the whole image. First, you need to get a stable clean system running. This will require a bit of work to start but will save you headaches in the future.

1. Go buy an external hard drive and copy all the files from the now working drive to it. You should be able to get the files from both drives as long as you have one of then operational.

2. Once you have everything copied, reinstall XP (from the MFG restore disk) on one of the drives.

3. When the OS install is complete, go to the mfg site (Dell, HP) for your PC and get the drivers. If you have third party cards (sound, video, etc), go to the mfg site for that device and get the driver. Microsoft drivers normally suck and cause problems.

4. Get all Windows Updates.

5. Be sure to do a BIOS update. This is simple now days and will run in windows. An old bios that isn't compatible with the latest OS updates can cause problems.

6. Leave the second drive in the pc and do a repartition and format it.

7. From this point on keep all working files on the second disk and only have the OS and programs on the first disk.

8. Reinstall all the other apps and get their updates.

9. Make a ghost backup.

Now you will have a setup that will insure your files are intact no matter what happens to the OS drive. If you continue to make backups of the "Data" drive you will be safe. The only safer solution would be to setup a RAID1 for your "Data" drive.

[islandtime]

BTW, the windows stop codes are mostly useless. You can get a hardware stop code and the problem still be with the OS. Did you try a chkdsk /r?

[kgunz11]

+1 to what islandtime said. That's what I would do if it were me.

[wgnoyes]

First: Kgunz is right, get rid of Norton and install Kapersky or AVG.

Second: Watch your credit card for strange charges. I had problems after trying Experts Exchange in the past.

It sounds like your system is corrupt and as a result the ghost images are as well. Good news is you can use the file browser in ghost to browse the backups you've made and recover your files without having to restore the whole image. First, you need to get a stable clean system running. This will require a bit of work to start but will save you headaches in the future.

1. Go buy an external hard drive and copy all the files from the now working drive to it. You should be able to get the files from both drives as long as you have one of then operational.

....

9. Make a ghost backup.

Now you will have a setup that will insure your files are intact no matter what happens to the OS drive. If you continue to make backups of the "Data" drive you will be safe. The only safer solution would be to setup a RAID1 for your "Data" drive.

Yeah.... and that's exactly what I did when it all crashed on 11/30. And it did it again on 12/10, and here I am. I'm not willing to do all that again. I have to get around the 07B stop without reformatting and rebuilding yet again. The stop happens so quickly, it HAS to be something simple, basic, and stupid. And yes, I've done chkdsk /r multiple times along with all the other useless things available in the so-called "recovery" console.

[wgnoyes]

Norton anti virus is a POS. Ditch it. Pretty much anything form norton these days is total crap. About the only thing I see being used in a production environment with proper desktop support is norton ghost.

During boot, hit F8 to get the windows boot options. One of them should allow you to see the full list of drivers loading as they load. You can then see if/where they are crapping out. ...

Nope. You're referring to one or the other "safe boot" options. Nothing works from that screen. Everything gets a 07B stop.

[azeric]

Before you go nuts lets determine whether its a driver problem or a hardware problem.

You need to build a Bart PE Windows Boot CD or DVD. Its one of my favorite tools for diagnosing problems just like this.

Here's the link to his web site complete with directions on how to build the disk. I hope this will help you and others solve these #@$$##$ problems that can drive you nuts.

Good luck and let us know how it works

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

[Kagemusha]

rebuild from scratch then transfer your documents/data?

Edited December 14, 2009 by Kagemusha

[ajg308]

Take the new hard drive out and slave it into another computer via direct connection to the motherboard. You can also use a USB enclosure if you want. Once the hard drive is recognized in the system then you can do a number of things. Most helpful would be to do chkdsk /r or /f. If that does not work then I would try replacing the registry hive from the backup. I have recovered several computers doing it this way.

I also agree with getting rid of Norton. Do it and don't look back. I like the paid for version of AVG.

Also, if you are interested there are backup programs that will make backup images of the complete hard drive, that way you do not have to reload everything from scratch.

[outerlimits]

"Hello, I'm a Mac"

[wgnoyes]

Take the new hard drive out ...

I can already access the hard drive from the other original hard drive (the one that contains the operating system that mysteriously fixed itself!). I shouldn't need to to take it out as you describe, I would think. I've done chkdsk /r from the cruelly-named "recovery console". I can try a chkdsk /f from this system. (/f isn't available on the RC.)

I already have norton ghost for backup.

AVG lets viruses through. I'll never trust it.

I don't have a backup of this particular system before it went down. And I don't know how to replace a "registry hive" (?).

[wgnoyes]

...

During boot, hit F8 to get the windows boot options. One of them should allow you to see the full list of drivers loading as they load. You can then see if/where they are crapping out.

Actually, I am able to do that. He stopped on agp440.sys. Google that, and technet says go into recovery console and disable agp440. I did and tried safe again. It got a little further to mup.sys and crashed. Disabled that. Then ndis.sys. Disabled that. Then ntfs.sys, and I know I need this, so I stopped.

[wgnoyes]

Same problem popped up with two drives, therefore I would rule out a drive issue. I would pop the ram and replace it if you have it, otherwise if you have two sticks try popping out the slot 0 ram and setting it aside and then move the other over to that slot. try and boot, no? swap with the one you set aside. Making sure to only have one in each time you try. also look for overheats, are all the fans turning? Power supply, video, cpu? not clogged up with shit? Take every damn card out of the machine and unplug everything you don't need to boot. dump cdrons dvds whatever.... reduce it down to bare bones... does it boot?

If none of that does it you either have a boot virus, or a controller or on board ram issues, in which case you need a new board.

You may also need to go into cmos and check the setting for the drives... seeif there is an autodetect on anything scsi. I've seen machine crash and the setting needed to use a scsi sata drive where changed and it could not find the boot sector and this caused the same error you have. I've seen these machine crash and reset to defaults that do not work for the SATA drive. My system does this! I get the same error you have and need to change my settings in cmost to get it going.

do that and report back and we'll try some more stuff....

Do I REALLY need to do all that to the hardware? The box will boot off the mysteriously-recovered hard drive that I have hanging off the secondary sata port. And wondering if there was a hardware controller issue, I've swapped cables between the hard drives and the original system will boot off the primary sata port as well, and the new crashed system will not boot off the secondary port. So it doesn't matter how the drives are wired, I get the same result. This started when I tried to update the sound card drivers from microsoft update and I can't get past that.

And I tried taking the sound card out. No change.

Edited December 15, 2009 by wgnoyes

[wgnoyes]

"Hello, I'm a Mac"

I'm sorry, I know you didn't mean ill, but I DON"T have any sense of humor about this disaster.

[kgunz11]

Bill, I had a problem like this once. I replaced the motherboard, which intermittently was going out, and never had another issue. It's now cheaper to buy a new unit (complete tower) from Tiger Direct and transfer all your needed documents than all the headache of replacing the motherboard. The one I bought for the shop here is a 3.6 gig Pentium4 Hyperspeed with 2 gigs of ram and a 500 gig hard disk. It cost me under $400. My high performance mother boards were costing me close to that.

[Classic_jon]

Since you sound fairly tech savvy and most of what others have suggested, and you have tried, is not working try this.

Do you have another PC that has the same chipset? If you do, yank the drives and drop them in the other system by themselves using known good cables. If it boots, then it is the drive controller on the old board or a memory issue more than likely.

Another way to test the same thing is to get an external drive controller and do the same thing on the system you have after disabling the onboard controllers in the BIOS.

You might also check and see if there is an onboard sound AIC chip that somehow got enabled in the BIOS and is causing a conflict.

Since it will boot off of the other "old drive" one of the questions I have that was not quite clear is if the "old drive" has also had the sound and video driver update or not?

As to one last gasp as well. have you taken the drives out of the current box and scanned them with a good, up to date anti-virus as well as some spyware removal tools like Spybot, Malwarebytes, and AdAware? As someone else said as well if there are multiple anti-virus programs on the system, Norton does not play well with others at all as it puts Hooks into the very low level "kernel" of the operating system. On the outside chance, some of the errors you are describing could be caused by a root-kit or some really nasty spyware.

More info and from my understanding:

Generally the AGP440 driver is used for backwards comparability with the older 440BX chipsets so you should not hurt anything at all by not running it when you use the F8 and step by step loading. You should also be able to try running without MUP.sys as long as you are not trying to use the network. Many times crashes that look like they are from MUP.sys are not since it is usually the last file loaded before windows starts. ( http://www.aitechsolutions.net/mupdotsysXPhang.html )

For some advice on drivers "suggested" to be updated from Microsoft.

I generally try to never use the default sound blaster or Video card drivers that they suggest and always go to the manufacturer. The reason for this is past history in running some computer shops where those default drivers caused serious OS stability issues very similar to what you describe. The drivers for both of those that Microsoft puts on their site just contain the default drivers that enable the *minimum* functionality without all of the other features and most importantly, proper error handling. For sound card manufacturers other than Sound blaster or ones that are AIC chips then the default Microsoft ones generally work well.

Hope this helps!