A31p just stopped working - blue screen with ***STOP error

[lb266]

I have a refurbished A31p which has been working fine for almost two years, when suddenly today it does not boot into windows XP.

I get a small blue screen with white text that eventually shows below a line that says "Technical Information" an error code as follows
"***STOP: 0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0x00000009, 0xF7B808C8, 0xF7B805C4).

Each time I attempt to boot the computer I get to different places in the boot up process, but I never get past logging into windows. I get this message sometimes after windows loads and I attempt to login, sometimes my machines does not even show the POST/BIOS screen.

I've removed any/all external periphials, tried with and without AC power.

Not sure what to do next, or where to start troubleshooting.

Any direction and help is appreciated.

Thanks.
Larry B

System Info:
A31p 2653-XX6 (based on 2653-H3U) with extra 512MB added
BIOS 1.08 (1GET36WW)
BIOS Date: 2003-07-08
WinXP Pro

[fongj]

Hard drive is failing.... Get whatever data you can off it fast.... trust me, this killed my productivity last summer... I tried to fix it while preserving everything, but in the end, the hard drive is a lost cause (except for taking it apart for powerful magnets). Get an external 2.5" hard drive enclosure and move everything you can.

Hard drive has bad sectors that chkdisk might fix, but the bad sectors come back after a while, so plan on buying a new hard drive and using the current one as a second one for non-crucial data only.

[lb266]

Thanks for the suggestion! I would have never thought it was the hard drive given the symptoms. I was just about to send it off for warranty repair (which is a 6 week turnaround), but do you think it is worth trying a restore first?

Thank God I have a Symantec Ghost image taken a few days prior to this trouble starting.

Is it difficult to remove and replace the hard drive in the A31p? Is there a good tutorial on HD replacement you can reccomend?

Thanx
LB266

[fongj]

Thanks for the suggestion! I would have never thought it was the hard drive given the symptoms. I was just about to send it off for warranty repair (which is a 6 week turnaround), but do you think it is worth trying a restore first?

Thank God I have a Symantec Ghost image taken a few days prior to this trouble starting.

Is it difficult to remove and replace the hard drive in the A31p? Is there a good tutorial on HD replacement you can reccomend?

Thanx
LB266

For bad sectors on the hard drive, I would ask for a new one.

A31p Hard Drive removal (with links to movies for removal and installation): http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-39674

[lb266]

Mack Camera warranty, that I got with the refurb A31p unit, is quoting a 6 week turnaround - so I decided to try replacing the hard drive myself first before sending it in and incurring 2-way shipping costs to NJ.

I got a Travelstar 5k100 60GB drive last night and will try a fresh WinXP install over the weekend to see if that does the trick. I don't have a recovery CD but I do have a WinXP Pro install cd and will try an install with using the product key attached to the bottom of my A31p.

I do have an image backup of the C drive partition, but I'd like to do a fresh install without the IBM service partition; I should be able to get the drivers and tools from the backup image.

Anybody done this type of recovery successfully?


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