Motherboard + XP = Blue Screen of Death

I'm in the process of building a PC from all new hardware. When I run the Windows XP Install CD, it loads the drivers but then freezes on a blue screen of death stating, "A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer."

Technical Information:

*** STOP 0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0xF748E0BF, 0xF78DA208, 0xF78D9f08)

*** pci.sys - Address F748E0BF base at F7487000, Datestamp 3b7d855c

Since this is the first time I've seen this having built several PCs, I suspect it's a hardware issue. I've already tested and formatted the new HDD (Seagate EIDE 320) to NTFS on another PC. The DDR2 (2 x 1GB unbuffered) memory was purchased at the same time and store as the mobo and processor; according to the BIOS tests it's fine. I'm running on-board audio/video; no add-on cards have been installed and the BIOS is set to factory defaults.

The board is an ECS 945GCT-M/1333 with a Celeron processor. Fry's has already exchanged the board once, but the problem persists. Since I'm building this for a friend who's on a budget, I'd like to avoid having to upgrade to a more expensive board.

 

are you using a win xp w/ sp2 install disk? i thought i read somewhere that any other versions don't recognize pci express, which that mobo has.

btw, there is a way to make your install disk have sp2 on it, just do a search on how to slipstream windows xp install disks for sp2

 

The XP CD I have does not have SP2 on it; however I have used it for a total rebuild (new mobo/hdd) using a new ASUS mobo that only had PCI-E.

Thanks for the tip...I'll look into the slipstream thing.

 

The STOP:0x0000007E error is usually due to either a faulty device or a faulty device driver. Since this is a new XP install, I'm inclined to think it's a faulty device, and since there's no add-in cards, I'm inclined to think that the board is bad. But getting 2 bad motherboards in a row is pretty rare unless the manufacturer released a bunch with faulty components (ABit suffered a class action lawsuit because of this a few years back). If you're still using the same hard drive as you did with the first motherboard, it could be that it's at fault here. "7E" errors are usually not associated with memory so I don't think that is at fault. In my personal experience, "7E" errors are from bad hard drives or bad drive controllers (floppy controllers too). If you have a different hard drive, try it and see what happens. Check the ECS site and see if there's a known issue that flashing the BIOS will fix. And take a look at this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330182/en-us Maybe it will help...
Good luck :major

EDIT- I was just thinking... try disabling any on board devices (LAN, sound, USB) one at a time and see if that helps narrow down the problem....

 

UPDATE: The SP2 thing was the problem. I slipstreamed a CD with SP2 and it is now loading without incident.

Thanks for the tips.

It's been one of those days.... :tas