Windows 7 Freezes When Resuming From Standby

This was a problem that I had a lot of trouble with. When I first installed Windows 7, I could put the computer in sleep mode and resume without problems. The nice thing about sleep mode is that the computer uses only 1W of electricity but and awaking, or resuming, from sleep mode takes less than 10 seconds

When I first installed Windows 7, I had an old hard drive installed. Unfortunately, Windows chose to install all the boot files on that hard drive. I bought a new 2000 GB hard drive and removed that old hard drive. (This actually has a bearing on the problem, but I did know that at the time.) The startup repair took several hours to install the boot files on a new hard drive. After it did that, then I started having problems with Windows 7 coming out of sleep mode. I would get three STOP code on the infamous blue screen of death (BSOD): 0x00000077 KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR, 0x0000007A KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR, and 0x000000F4 CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION. What was weird was that everything would act normal for a few seconds, and then suddenly one of those BSOD appeared. Since the problem occured after I removed my old hard drive and installed a 2000 GB hard drive, I thought it had something to do with fixing the boot files of Windows. I tried searching for the problem with no success. I tried searching for 0x00000077, 0x77, 0x0000007A, 0x7A, 0x000000F4, 0xF4; I tried adding the words Windows 7 and sleep in the search along with all 6 of codes, but got nothing relevant.

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0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 8:20 PM - Categories: Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) | Computer Repair Notes

Fixing the STOP 0x0000007E Error

I had a laptop computer with that had the STOP 0x0000007E blue screen error code. It happened while starting Windows, even in safe mode. I knew from the customer told me that he had a malware problem. Since I could even get into Windows, I didn't know what exactly was causing this issue. Every article I've read said it was a driver issue. And I think that is correct considering it happened before Windows even loaded. The two knowledgebase articles (here and here) that I found from Microsoft did not help. Neither did a simple disk check.

I pulled the hard drive out of the laptop and scanned it with an antivirus and antimalware program. There was some very nasty stuff on that computer, even a rootkit. After cleaning up the malware, I put the hard drive back in the computer. Still, the STOP 0x7E message was there.

This meant I had only one option left: the in-place upgrade, commonly known as a repair installation. I find that the in-place upgrade option can fix bad drivers because you are forced to re-install them during the setup process. If the driver is bad, you can simply delete the file before it detects it. Pressing the SHIFT + F10 keys brings up a command prompt which can use to find the bad driver file and delete it. In any event, performing the in-place upgrade fixed the problem.

Not every installation of Windows XP can perform an in-place upgrade. But if it can, it is my experinece that 95 times out 100 it fixes any problem you have with getting Windows to start. It is time consuming, but effective.

0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 7:46 PM - Categories: Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) | Computer Repair Notes

The Mystery of the STOP 0x8E Windows Error

While working on a computer, I encounted a computer that would exhibit the STOP 0x0000008E blue screen but only just after I told Windows to restart. A quick Google search revealed that STOP0x0000008E is a very common problem. In fact, Microsoft had three articles about this very STOP code. These are my notes on how I fixed the STOP 0x0000008E KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED error that only occurs during a restart.

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Posted by Wade Burchette at 11:00 AM - Categories: Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) | Computer Repair Notes | Windows