hello people, this is my first time using this website and would appreciate any help or ideas about my problem...

ok so last night before i went to bed i was feeling lazy and instead of turning my computer off i just put it to sleep using the button on my keyboard. i woke up today and couldnt get it to wake up so i decided to hold in the power button to turn it off and try rebooting. when i turned it on it went straight to a the boot in safe mode, start windows normally or start it from last known point. no matter which one i choose it goes to the windows logo and looks like its about to boot up then it goes to the blue screen reading the message.. a problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage etc... and it has the code

stop: 0x0000007e ( 0xc0000005, 0x8a297bcb, 0xba4f76a4, 0xba4f73a0 )

i have tried putting in the xp disc but nothing happens apart from the noise it makes when trying to read the disk, other than that it just goes straight to the blue screen with the same message and code. i replaced one of the 256k rams for a 1 gig one but that was over a month ago, other than that the only piece of software i have installed is pkr online poker but that was over 2 weeks ago.

what could have caused my machine to do this and how can i resolve it? any info or help would be very very much appreciated as i am really stuck as to what to do... its a dell desktop its and about 3 to 4 years old. i dont have a car so getting it to a computer shop is very difficult. does this sound fatal or could it maybe be sorted out with some computer trickery? if anyone can help save my computer i will put a donation in to d-a-l to say thankyou. cheers. andy

You are going to have to get into BIOS Setup on your computer to set the CD/DVD drive as the first bootable device, so you can then boot your XP CD. How you do this varies with each manufacturer. Normally you press F1, F2, F10 or Del when you see the manufacturers logo. Often there is a clue somewhere on the screen when you boot normally telling you what key to press.

If you don't have an XP CD, download and create a bootable CD from the .iso file XP Recovery Console

You don't burn the iso file itself to CD., you create a CD from the iso file using your CD burning software. There is a good freeware burner called ImgBurn which will
do this.

Boot the CD and at the first opportunity, enter R to start the Recovery Console.
Next, choose which XP installation you want to login to. Normally this will be 1.
Lastly you will be asked for the Administrator password. Just press the Enter key as the Administrator does not have a password (unless you gave it one, then you would enter it).
From the command prompt, enter: chkdsk c: /r
Allow it to complete undisturbed.

thank you for the reply, that has got me started but i dont know what the administrater password is and ive tried all the words it could be... ive read around and it sounds like i might have to completely reinstall but that would mean i lose all my work, photos and music. is there another way around??

thankyou muchly

Normally, there is no administrator password. Just press Enter when prompted. If that doesn't work, try booting a Linux "Live" CD like Puppy Linux. See if you can access the
DVD drives and USB devices that way. If yes then you can backup your data to a flash drive, CD or DVD drive then do a reinstall of XP.

See this post by Happyrck on GeeksToGo for Puppy Linux: http://www.geekstogo.com/.....=findpost&p=1197721#entry1197721

Get the latest version available as the one he recommends is no longer easy to
find.

If you have forgotten your Administrator password or it doesn't work when you use the Recovery Console, try these:

Offline NT Password & Registry Editor <-- recommended by Bob Cerelli

Emergency Boot CD

Forgot the Administrator's Password? - Windows Password Recovery - Windows Password Reset

Ophcrack

I Forgot My Administrator Password!

hi there thanks for the reply. after trying everything i could i decided to just cut my losses and reinstall windows... now i am having trouble connecting to the internet. after looking around the web for advice i found out that i have some missing drivers by going to control panel>administrater tools> computer management>device manager.

i am missing the following things... ethernet controller, pci device, sm bus controller, universal serial bus usb controller and video controller vga compatible.

i have no clue what this means or what to do next other than keep looking. just wanted to say thanks for your help and if you know anything about this it would be appreciated. cheerz

i am missing the following things... ethernet controller, pci device, sm bus controller, universal serial bus usb controller and video controller vga compatible.

Ztrucker is going to need the make and model number of your computer to help you locate drivers for your motherboard and ethernet card. If you can supply exact information. It will make the search go very much easier.

Everest Home Edition is a free program for getting system info on Windows Computers.

Also the scanner at one of the Forum site pages will do the same job I think also.

also i have looked all over for the correct drivers especially for the ethernet controller but cant find anything i looked on the dell page but nothing and i bet its somewhere really obvious and im just being stupid but if anyone could help me find the correct drivers for a dell dimension 3100, i think the model is dv051 and the service tag is 8bvsh2j. cheerz

All the XP drivers for your system are here: Drivers & Downloads

For the network, you want the Intel Driver under Network. I would recommend installing the Chipset driver first, then the network driver.

You can download them on another computer, put it on a flash drive then install it on this one. Once you have that, go to the link I gave you and get any others you need.

Post back if you have any questions.

hi rich, i started another post i think yesterday because i was unsure about the drivers and was told the same thing... to install the chip set driver first. i put it on a memory stick to put on my computer but when i try open it (double click) it asks me weather i want to find the apropriate program to open it with from the web or a list of programs. obviously i cant use the net but all the programs in the list are things like word and paint. it works fine when i double click on this computer, it starts to open and load before i cancel it. i will try burning it to a cd and try that but does this sound like a common problem and can you give any advice on this. i will do that now and post a response shortly. thank you

tried the disk but had the same result. what it says is that windows cannot open this file and that it cannot do so because it cant recognize what created it. look forward to replies...