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Subject:
From:
"Frank R. Brown" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 17 Nov 2002 19:43:26 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (117 lines)
I am having a major problem re-installing w2k on my kid's
computer.  I have tried many things.

The end-point of the re-install attempt has always been:

STOP  0x0000007B
         ( 0xF4063848
           0xC0000034
           0x00000000
           0x00000000
         )
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

Details:

Motherboard:  Abit-ka7 (Athlon processor)

Scsi card: Adaptec 19160
Hard drive: Seagate Cheetah
Cd-rom:  External IBM (old, slow, but very robust)
              Plextor Ultraplex-40
Floppy:   Teac (standard)


Background:

When the system was originally built, it had the seagate hard
drive, the IBM cd-rom, and a video card (creative labs, geforce 2).
(Subsequently, we added several things: the Plextor cd-rom, a
Plextor cd-rw, a sound card, a maxtor drive with a promise ata-100
ide controller.)

When first configured, we installed w2k off a bootable w2k cd-rom.
This was the old, external IBM drive, accessed through the 19160.
The install was quite easy. (My recollection is that we did not
need to install special adapted 19160 drivers --- the w2k cd was
able to work with the drive.)  We did have to tweak things to get
some of the fancy feature of the video card to work without hanging.

Over time, the computer started to get flaky.  This have never
smelled like a hardware problem.  My kid has installed many
things:  games, downloaded game, new hardware, non-existent
hardware, and so on.  Things got worse and worse  (no surprise).
The two biggest problem seem to be that services.exe maxes out
the computer on start-up, and that active desktop acts flaky and
seems to hang the computer.  We decided to bite the bullet, and
do a fresh install.

Now we just can't win.

We've stripped the machine down to:
  video card, adaptec card and one cd-rom (we've
     tried both the IBM and Plextor)
  video card, adaptec card, and cd-rom (either the
     IBM or Plextor), and floppy drive
  other combinations

No matter what we do, we get the "Inaccessible boot
device" error.  We've tried installing (booting) off the
Plextor drive, with and without the IBM and Seagate
drives installed, tried installing off the IBM drive, with and
without the Plextor and Seagate drives installed.
We've tried installing off a non-bootable w2k cd
(msdn, sp1), building the w2k install floppy disks,
and then starting the install process from the floppies.

We've reset the cmos, both from the Abit "soft-menu"
(both to "fail-safe defaults", and "optimised defaults"),
and by using the cmos reset jumper on the motherboard.


The computer boots (starts to boot) from:

The original w2k install
From the bootable w2k cd in the IBM drive
From the bootable w2k cd in the Plextor drive
From the floppies built form the msdn w2k cd
From a variety of other bootable cd-roms and floppies

This includes being able to boot from an old linux install
cd-rom (Plextor drive) that was shipped with motherboard.

At wit's end, we installed the Abit linux, apparently, and
presumably reformatting the seagate hard drive.  The linux
install booted, and worked.  (We couldn't get the gui
going, but didn't try very hard.)

So that's the conundrum.  All the hardware appears to
work.  We can boot off everything (one way, or another).
We could install and run linux.

Looking as microsoft's support web site, the stop message
has two main resolutions:

   1) Virus -- We're booting fresh off read-only media
       and  reformatting.

   2) Drivers -- First, the computer boots just fine off of
       the w2k cd-rom.  Second, the w2k install process
       gives you the opportunity to install additional "mass
       storage" devices (F6).  We've used that opportunity
       to install drivers downloaded off of adaptec's web
       site.  (My recollection is that we did not have to specially
       load adaptec drivers during the original install.)

Sorry for the length, and the brain-dump of information,
but we've tried a lot of things.

Any help would be appreciated.

     Frank R.Brown
     Frank.R.Brown@MailAndNews

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