XP Won’t Boot :( Repair Series Part 3: Blue Screen Errors at XP Boot

XP Won’t Boot 🙁
Repair Series Part 3: Blue Screen Errors at XP Boot

Diagnosing and fixing blue screen errors at boot in Windows XP is kind of heavy duty so I’m going to be less detailed on these as I only expect people with a deeper technical understanding and background to attempt to fix these.

Please note that this list is based on personal experience as a repair tech and not what I have read. When I researched these for this post, I noticed a lot of differences between what I had in my repair diary and what I found others reporting online so I stuck with what I know from experience so here is my disclaimer 🙂

DISCLAIMER: These examples use techniques that I actually employ in the real world to deal with real problems. They might be wrong or dangerous. They might be inefficient. If you try them yourself, it might cause damage or irreparable loss. I take no responsibility for anything you do based on my examples or the information that I provide here.


BSOD 0x00000050
First check the health of the disk.

This can be a bad memory stick but almost always I have found it to be caused by a bad device driver. Often the CD or Video drivers.
Try booting into VGA mode or adding the /basevideo switch to boot.ini.

Then try booting with the /sos switch added to boot.ini or enable Boot Logging to find the file producing the error and if possible remove the device that the erroneous file is a driver for or use Recovery Console commands to disable the driver or service. Remember that if you disable a driver or service in Recovery Console that you want to look at it first with the listsvc command and write down the start type so you can enable it properly at a later time.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

To check if it is bad memory, run memtest86.

Remember, if a device driver that used to work fine suddenly causes this error without you changing anything, expect there to be malware or a virus on the system and scan accordingly.

BSOD 0x0000007B
First check the health of the disk.

If the disk is healthy this error is often indicative of virus activity. Specifically an infected or damaged device driver that is neccessary for booting or the MBR could be pointing to a bad or malicious boot sector. Make sure that the MBR is pointing at the correct active partition and that there is no disk damage that could be in the bootsector or bootstrap code of the active partition.

If you are able to repair this by changing the MBR expect there to be malware or a virus on the system and scan accordingly.

Try booting with the /sos switch added to boot.ini or enable Boot Logging to find the file producing the error and if possible remove the device that the erroneous file is a driver for or use Recovery Console commands to disable the driver or service. Remember that if you disable a driver or service in Recovery Console that you want to look at it first with the listsvc command and write down the start type so you can enable it properly at a later time.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

BSOD 0x00000077
First check the health of the disk.
This one can be the same as 0x0000007B but if the appropriate parameters are provided with the error you can use this page to determine if it is being caused by a bad hard drive…
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315266

Be sure to check the health of the hard drive if you are seeing this error before trying anything else. You may be running out of time and need to do a data recovery ASAP.

BSOD 0x00000078
First check the health of the disk.
My experience is that this is similar to 0x0000007B but it actually starts reading a seemingly proper boot sector and then crashes while services marked SERVICE_BOOT_START are loading. Booting with the boot.ini /sos switch or Boot Logging enabled may help find the offending driver. Also check the disk health and make sure that the MBR looks correct.
Once you find a suspect driver use Recovery Console commands to disable the driver or service. Remember that if you disable a driver or service in Recovery Console that you want to look at it first with the listsvc command and write down the start type so you can enable it properly at a later time.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

BSOD 0x0000007E
This is very similar to 0x00000050 but without the bad RAM possibility.

BSOD 0x00000024
First check the health of the disk. and recover the data ASAP if it is bad. I have never seen this error for anything but a disk going bad.

BSOD 0x000000D1
First check the health of the disk.
This is another driver error. For this one, try disabling USB then NIC(if it is on board) in the BIOS. If the NIC is a card, remove it and try to boot. If either of these fix the problem then search Microsoft for the hotfix or try a different NIC.

BSOD 0x000000ED
If you see this error, make sure that the computer is running the latest service pack. If not, then check the health of the disk.. If it is healthy then run chkdsk/r and it should boot. Then upgrade the system to the latest service pack.

If it is running the latest service pack then check the disk health and begin data recovery if it comes up bad. After recovery of important data try chkdsk to see if it repairs the drive.

BSOD 0x000000f4
I haven’t seen this much but usually it is a badly connected SATA drive. Check for loose connections or try plugging it into a different socket or with a different cable.

BSOD 0xc000021a
First check the health of the disk.
This one has never gone well for me. It is a mess with the final step of the XP boot process and I have always had to do a repair reinstall to fix it. Here is the Microsoft article on it…
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/156669

Part 1: POST and MBR Issues

Part 2: Bootloader to Logon Issues

Part 4: Recovery Console and Other Tools


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