I know with some older motherboards and Win XP, you could run into problems 
with a SATA drive being detected, because the drivers for this type of 
controller were not included.  You needed to have the SATA drivers available 
on a floppy and install them using the "F6" option when it is offered.  I 
don't know if you would see the stop error that you mentioned, however. 
(And, I can't recall if later service packs may have fixed this issue.) 
Newer MB  BIOS have options for getting the SATA controller to emulate an 
IDE controller.  This might be an option if it is available.  (I'm not sure 
if "emulating" is technically correct, but it seems to work something like 
that.)

Check the Acer site to see if they have SATA drivers available for this 
system.

If it is a hardware failure, a SATA controller card would probably be less 
expensive to try than a new motherboard, though a new motherboard covers 
more potential defects.  The trick might be finding a new MB compatible with 
this system's CPU and memory.  You might be looking for a used one.

As a side-note, I probably would have written zeroes to the drive using the 
manufacturer's utility or Boot N Nuke, in order to be sure there was no boot 
sector virus present.

John Sproule

----------Original Message Below------------

Date:    Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:15:59 +1000
From:    Don Penlington <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Stop Error 7B

I'm working on a 3-year old Acer Aspire computer which suddenly stopped
booting into Vista.

I tried to reinstall XP, intending to reformat when offered that option.
But after copying the initial files and at the "Setup is starting Windows"
stage---before any actual installation----- I got "Stop Error 0x0000007B
(0xF899263c, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)".

Googling  Stop Error 7B indicates a boot virus, or a failed Sata
Controller, among other things.

I removed the hard drive, inserted it into my computer, and reformatted its
2 partitions (full reformat). Checking disk size confirmed virtually the
whole drive is now empty. I ran antivirus (Avira) and antimalware
(Malwarebytes) scans on both partitions which both came up clean as 
expected.

While the drive was still in my computer, I installed XP Pro SP1.  That
went without a hitch and I now had dual-boot from the 2 hard drives. My
computer booted perfectly into the new installation. I rebooted several
times into both versions of XP, no problems. It therefore seems that the
hard drive is fine.

I then put the hard drive back into the Acer computer but upon rebooting it
gave the same stop error before starting to load XP.  I then inserted the
XP installation disk but trying to run the setup CD again gave the same
stop error.

Once more I removed the hard drive, inserted it back into my computer, and
reformatted both its partitions again. This time I left the hard drive
completely empty. I ran both security scans again.  All clean.

Upon putting the hard drive back into the Acer, setting the boot order to
boot from CD, and attempting to run the XP installation, again it loaded
the setup files, then came up once more with the accursed same stop error
before offering the usual options.

I entered the BIOS and set it to optimised defaults, but that made no
difference.

Could it be that the Sata Controller on the motherboard has failed?  Is
there a solution other than replacing the motherboard? Anything else I
should try?

Don Penlington

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