T43 BSOD on XP install and startup

[jamnkats]

My T43 has ocassionally been a little wonky but I never figured it for a BSOD. At times it would hang up and I'd power down and startup and all would be fine. It runs cool enough - 50s and 60s and I only use it for work stuff (wordprocessing, internet, email) and no graphic-intensive stuff. So after this BSOD I tried last known good and safe mode and kept getting hive file error at \systemroot\system32\config\software

So I figured I'd do XP repair. The XP setup disk loads but when it gets to the point that windows should start (still blue setup screen - I haven't even had the chance to select repair) I get STOP 0x0000006F Session3_Initialization_Failed. Now I can't believe it is a file issue as I am still running totally off the CD and no installation type has been selected, so I'm thinking it has to be hardware, right? So I popped out both sticks of RAM and replaced with known good but still get the error. I then tried a different HD. Still error. So I'm guessing CPU or motherboard issue? Any ideas?

Oh, it is the 2687DSU in my sig.

[RealBlackStuff]

Remove the keyboard screws, lift it up but keep it connected. Remove the wifi card. Now put pressure on the big Intel SouthBridge chip under where the wifi card was and try booting again.
If successful, your SB needs reflowing/reballing.

[jamnkats]

Remove the keyboard screws, lift it up but keep it connected. Remove the wifi card. Now put pressure on the big Intel SouthBridge chip under where the wifi card was and try booting again.
If successful, your SB needs reflowing/reballing.

I couldn't get 2 of the screws out of the wifi card but pushed down anyway and still hive error. You think this is a GPU problem? I've had NO display issues at all.

[RealBlackStuff]

The Southbridge controls USB, hard disks, I/O ports and a whole slew of other stuff, nothing to do with the GPU at all.
You need to remove the wifi card to put pressure on different corners of that SB chip.

[ajkula66]

I'd be tempted to say that this is a software problem rather than a hardware malfunction.

My route would be to save any important files and do a fresh install from the recovery media.

[RealBlackStuff]

Stop error 6F:
The process creation failure indicated by this error message can only happen during the fairly brief time that the Windows Executive is being initialized, which is during phase 4 of Windows startup. Typically there is a problem with a device driver or with a missing or corrupt system file used during Windows startup.

Digging deeper into this, try and swap out your CD/DVD drive, that could be the culprit.
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-2424622.php

[jamnkats]

Ok, so I got R&R disks, installed a previously working 40MB HDD (from a T42) and was able to create the R&R partition no problem. Booted into R&R and went about part 2 of recovery and during that process I got a failure to recover at around 85-90% ish done in processing CXEA17A.IMZ

Any ideas? I'm going to try another different HDD (as I would get an error booting this one saying it wasn't original or soemthing to the (BIOS?) and see.

OK, I tried using these same disks (they were provided when I purchased the machine) on another T43 and get the same error so I'm suspecting the disks. That said, I swapped out the HDD (no error on boot now) and am restoring with T42 recovery disks. Getting a network card error but hopefully it will at least get me to an operating system?

[jamnkats]

To update this, I finally got XP installed and it has been working fine since (months now) so the problem looks to be both a faulty XP upgrade disk and the T42 R&R disks.