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# Troubleshooting Stop 0x0000007B or "0x4,0,0,0" errors

Article ID: 122926

Article Last Modified on 4/13/2007

APPLIES TO

- Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Edition
- Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.5
- Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.51
- Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Developer Edition
- Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.5
- Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.51
- Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Standard Edition
- Microsoft BackOffice Small Business Server 4.0
- Microsoft BackOffice Small Business Server 4.0a

This article was previously published under Q122926

## SYMPTOMS

When you restart a computer that is running a Windows operating system, or when you start the Setup program to install Windows, you may receive an error message that resembles one of the following:
Error message 1
STOP: 0x0000007B Inaccessible Boot Device
Error message 2
Setup has encountered a fatal error that prevents it from continuing. Contact your software representative for help. The following status codes will assist them "0x4, 0, 0, 0"
Error message 3
Setup has encountered a fatal error that prevents it from continuing.
Contact your product support representative for assistance. The following status will assist them in diagnosing the problem.
(0x4, 0x1, 0, 0)
Setup cannot continue. Power down or reboot your computer now.

## CAUSE

This problem may occur if one or more of the following conditions exists:

- Your computer is infected with a boot sector virus.
- A device driver required by your boot controller is not configured to start at boot time or is corrupt. If during a WINNT /B installation no mass storage device was detected.
- A resource conflict exists between the boot controller and another controller in the system or between SCSI devices.
- Drive translation is not being performed or was changed.
- The boot volume is corrupt and cannot be mounted by Windows NT.
- Information in the Windows NT registry about which device drivers load at start up is corrupt.
- If this error occurred during Windows NT Setup while reading Windows NT Setup floppy disk 2, you may have the Drive Swapping option enabled in your computer BIOS.
- Using winnt /b as the installation method may present a timing issue for the disk controller. The controller is not given enough time to respond and identify itself and is therefore detected incorrectly or not at all.
- If you run Setup from a bootable SCSI CD-ROM drive, you receive a STOP 7B error message because Setup does not allow you to add a third-party SCSI driver when you boot from the SCSI CD-ROM.
- The drives on your computer are damaged in such a manner that the Setup program is unable to correctly enumerate all the drives in the computer.
  Note You may experience this problem if one or more of the following conditions are true:
  - More than one hard disk has the same disk signature.
  - More than one RAW hard disk contains the same master boot record (MBR) checksum.

## RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, use the appropriate method:

### Method 1

Check any diskettes for viruses that may have been used in the computer since the last time you were able to successfully restart Windows NT.
NOTE: You may need to use more than one brand of virus detection software to detect and remove various viruses.
If a virus has infected the Windows NT computer and a virus detection program cannot remove the virus and repair the system, you will have to reinstall Windows NT. For more information on how to protect the boot sector from viruses in Windows NT, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

ARTICLE-ID: 122221
TITLE : How to Protect Boot Sector from Viruses in Windows NT

### Method 2

Windows NT requires a mini-port driver to communicate with the boot controller. If the device driver is corrupt or incompatible with your controller, you can replace it by copying a new drive to the %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder or through the Emergency Repair process. On computers running on a SCSI controller or ATAPI enabled systems, SCSIPORT.SYS and DISK.SYS (Windows NT 4.0 only) device drivers are also required to successfully boot.
If you attempt a "WINNT /B" installation, you may receive a STOP 0x7B before mass storage detection takes place. To work around this, when the computer reboots after the initial file copy, press F6 as soon as "Setup is inspecting your computers hardware configuration" is displayed. This will allow you to add a mass storage device at the very beginning of text mode setup.

ARTICLE-ID: 125933
TITLE : STOP 0x0000007B: Inaccessible Boot Device After Removing CD-ROM
ARTICLE-ID: 164471
TITLE : Replacing System Files Using a Modified Emergency Repair Disk

### Method 3

If an IRQ or I/O port address conflict exists between your boot controller and another controller in the system, Windows NT will either hang or stop with the Stop 0x0000007B error message. If you recently added new hardware, remove the new hardware or re-configure it so it does not conflict with the resources of any other installed controllers.
Check the SCSI chain for proper termination. Remove any non-essential SCSI devices or check to ensure each SCSI ID is unique.

ARTICLE-ID: 102651
TITLE : Required Settings for Adaptec 1510 SCSI Host Adapter

### Method 4

The Windows NT Boot partition must exist within the first 1024 cylinders of the boot device. This is due to restrictions of the INT-13 BIOS call used to start the operating system. Check your CMOS settings for LBA support on IDE based systems, or your SCSI controllers BIOS settings for enabling drive translation for drives greater than 2GB.

ARTICLE-ID: 114841
TITLE : Windows NT Boot Process and Hard Disk Constraints

### Method 5

If the file system is corrupt and Windows NT cannot mount the boot volume during start, move the drive to another machine running Windows NT and run the CHKDSK command on that drive. Alternately, attempt to create a parallel installation of Windows NT on the drive in a separate directory. The Windows NT Setup program checks the integrity of the volume prior to copying files and may fix some problems.

### Method 6

If the SYSTEM Hive in the Windows NT registry is corrupt, it may prevent Windows NT from loading the Mini-port device driver required by the boot controller. To resolve this problem, use one of the following methods:

- Start from the three Windows NT setup disks and use the Repair utility. When prompted, select to inspect registry files, and then only replace the System Configuration Registry hive. This hive contains information about which device drivers and services start during start up.
- Install a parallel copy of Windows NT into a separate directory, and then use Registry Editor to modify the System hive in the Windows NT registry to correct the invalid or missing information.

ARTICLE-ID: 165748
TITLE : How to Disable a Service or Device that Prevents NT from Booting

### Method 7

Many computers are equipped with a 5.25-inch and a 3.5-inch floppy diskette drive in one single unit. When you install Windows NT on a computer with this floppy drive unit, the STOP 0x7B error message may appear during Setup while Windows NT Setup disk 2 is being read. To resolve this problem, disable the Drive Swapping option in your system BIOS. For information about correcting this problem, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

ARTICLE-ID: 126423
TITLE : STOP: 0x0000007B "Inaccessible_Boot_Device" During Setup Disk2

### Method 8

Install using the three boot floppies, a bootable CD, winnt or winnt32. Install the device driver recommended by hardware vendor if one is available.

### Method 9

Install using the three boot floppy disks. Install the device driver recommended by hardware vendor if one is available.

### Method 10

1. Obtain the hotfix that is mentioned in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

   283891 Setup stops during SCSI RAID driver installation on computers with three or more partitions

2. Integrate hotfix 283891 into the Windows installation source files or into the Windows Setup diskettes.
3. Restart the Setup program to install Windows 2000.

Note To help determine which drive may be causing the problem that you experience when you try to install Windows, follow these steps:

1. Remove all the drives from the computer that are not required for the installation of Windows 2000.
2. For a computer that has only one hard disk, use a different hard disk, or verify the following settings or hardware:
   - Hardware jumper settings
   - BIOS settings
   - Drive cables
     Note Reseat the drive cables
   - SCSI termination
   For more information about how to perform these hardware-related tasks, contact the computer hardware vendor. For information about how to contact computer hardware vendors, click the appropriate article number in the following list to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   65416 Hardware and software vendor contact information, A-K
   60781 Hardware and software vendor contact information, L-P
   60782 Hardware and software vendor contact information, Q-Z

3. If the drive is new hard disk that has never been formatted, try to perform a low-level format operation on it. Then, use the MS-DOS Fdisk tool or the Windows Fdisk tool to create a partition on the drive before you run the Windows Setup program.
   Note When you install Windows, you can remove and then re-create the partition if you want to.
4. Run the Setup program to try to install Windows.

Additional query words: 3.50 3.51 4.00 0x7B Virus trap stop ntfaqset kbtshoot

Keywords: kbfaq kbprb kbusage KB122926