Hi,

New user to the forum so bear with me. I have an Advent 7008 laptop and on booting to winxp it suddenly halts with a BSoD message: "Terminated to protect your computer from further damage *** STOP: 0x00000007b", and many other numbers besides.

I've tried several things, one of them being a different HDD, it starts to boot into that system then halts with exactly the same message.

I've tried to contact Advent through their tech number but it says they are under attack from the sasser virus and 'can't take calls' ...... I only have 3 hairs left on my head as I've pulled out the rest. Any help and ideas would be much appreciated. If you need any further info, I'll do my best.

Bill

ps. I've tried to boot in safe mode with same results.

Homer Simpson

Best to call the tech line again. Best time to call is just before 10 pm or after 11pm and you wont have to wait long in the queue. Never ring on a monday or tuesday , busiest day of the week. Word of warning , they'll want you to run the recovery disks on the laptop first probably not using the default non destructive recovery method but using the system - quick format method. Once that's done and you get the same problem then it will be uplifted to the workshop for a repair. Don't tell them you tried another hardrive because they'll know you've opened up the case.

That stop error normally points towards hardrive faults but seeing as you already tried another one then will be something worse and will likely need a repair done on it.
Just try the recovery disks before you phone in just to save you the hassle of someone telling you to do that.

more info
helloPogue you have put pm there ,do
PCSERVICES (08709013000)work at night now??

Details I have on my contract says 24 hours for pcs, lappies, printers, faxes or wordprocessors, so his times may well be right Ben

I would hope so otherwise I must be working for someone else!
If only I were that lucky!!!

It's 24/7.

Thanks for your help. I'll give tech another go, but the problem is it's out of warranty, probably way out of warranty because it's a 'used' lappy.

I've already tried recovery disks, no avail. I've tried talking to it gently, shouting at it and a little reverse pyschology... sometimes I wonder if it's man or machine that's in charge... all to no avail.

Thanks again

Bill

if it is out of warrenty then may be it is worth
reseating the Physical memory(ram) it is under the keyboard some where .
remove any pcmcia cards and disconnect any prepherals and do
fdisk /mbr
to reset the master boot record

No good calling the tech line then if it is out of warranty as you'll end up having to call a premium rate number. Might be worth looking for a third party repair agent.

I did ring tech support, they offered a fixed 1 year repair contract for £369.00, which includes parts and labour and a 1 year guarantee......... problem is I looked under the mattress, there's an old sock a bit of tissue and what looks like a half eaten sarnie but no £369.00... So I thanked him kindly and decided to call the premium rate number at £1.50 per min... after 4 mins of getting nowhere I decided to try one more thing. I reformatted the hdd, stuck 98se on it and found that the problem is the first few clusters are ok but the next 6 blocks are NBG.... for some reason I couldn't fix them before, but using the 98 disk I'm able to at least start from somewhere....... I just need the nodding bird now to keep pressing 'f' for 'fix'.

Again, thanks for help

bill

which contradicted my first post about the other hdd..... it's very odd and I can't even explain why the 2 disks reacted the same. I'll stick to gardening from now on

But you said you tried a second hardrive and the same problem occured????

So you have 2 faulty hardrives?

Pogue..... unlikely but I can see what you mean. I did try another hdd and got the same BSoD, so it would seem there was another fault somewhere, after all, what are the chances of two hdd having the same fault.
I can't explain why they both threw up the same error message and I'm trying to find out why, but the harder I try the more it evades.

I'm currently on 1,297 clusters of 65.5k of those checked 29 are bad, the data has been moved to unaffected clusters, which was the OS start up, and I'm waiting to see if all is well at the end of it... only time will tell.

I'm not a techie (go on, say you already knew that) and can only go on what the machine says and what help I can get from others, which of course is much appreciated.

Bill

Bill, have a look here http://members.shaw.ca/rinocanada/hdutils.htm and you'll see the maxblast utilities. There's a download for maxblast plus 2 which I am pretty certain works on all HDDs, it runs from a bootable diskette so you can check out the HDD using that.

There's also maxblast 3 but I'm sure that is tied to Maxtor disks only.

Cheers Steve,

I tried it along with another program... DFT. It's definitley the hdd. Why it affected the other hdd I still don't know, it could be that this laptop has been jolted around that much that a connection may have come loose.

I really don't know what I'm doing when it comes to hardware, I'm more of a software type person. The first pc I got I didn't even look inside and thought upgrades were a thing of fantasy (I really must get out more)

Thanks again for yours and everyone's help and advice. I'm now taking it to a third party repairer who will probably just have a damn good laugh.

Bill

PS. Most people that are able to give good advice are the ones that have probably built or modified their own machines. I never got mechano as a kid, I do remember getting a bucking bronco though..... ahhhh p'raps that's why I hate donkeys.