7B Stop error

Hey folks, I have this very frustrating problem with an XP Media Center comp. Its a Dell Dimension 9200.

Initially when I started out troubleshooting it, I booted it up and found that the Windows XP screen with the blue dotted line kept scrolling across its progress bar endlessly.

So I thought maybe the RAM was gone, or at least one stick so I started swapping out the sticks and put them in each other's slots. Made no difference. Except that this time, instead of the Windows screen hanging endlessly, I started getting the 7B stop error. The 7B error became my problem from here on in.

Then I thought that maybe one of the other components were causing problems so I took everything out, rebooted the machine, and got the same error again. Then I took out the video card and put in a new one, same thing.

Then I started using Dell's built in software for diagnosing and found that the HDD has some errors. They were supposedly fixed by the software. So I rebooted and tried again, same thing.

I tried booting into Safe mode, no luck. I tried Ctrl F11 to get into the software to reset things back into factory defaults. No luck

Then I tried disconnecting even the Floppy, 1 of 2 dvd drives, the HDD and the card reader, so literally nothing was connecting to the mobo except for the one DVD drive and tried booting off the UBCD4WIN disc... no success.

THEN I tried booting of the UBCD v6b12 disc... worked like nothing else!. But I'm not sure what to do now. All components seem to cause problems so I don't want to reconnect them to test them with UBCD. Oh btw, I tested the power supply too... its fine

Any insights?

Thanks in advance

 

Anyone have any ideas? Any thoughts may potentially help

 

http://forums.aspfree.com/showpost.php?p=127027&postcount=2

This could be your issue and could fix it.

 

Thats not going to work for me, unfortunately. My BIOS does not have those settings. Anything else...? anyone?

 

7B seems to be a HD error. Maybe try a harddrive diagnostic like Seatools for DOS (bootable CD) I think Dell uses Seagate/Maxtor drives. Try booting from the diagnostic CD with the HD connected and run the LONG test.

Did your PC come with recovery discs or just the recovery partition? Are you trying to save data on the current HD or are you willing to reformat and start with a fresh load of the OS?