right, i went round to an old workmates house today cos he has computer probs.

he thought he had a virus.........but it looks like one of those dodgy spyware scare you into thinking you have viruses etc and pay for software ads.

as soon as his puter boots up (takes ages) it blue screens, so i stopped it restarting and managed to copy down this error code
stop: 0x0000007E(0XL0000005,0X82498E98,0X86199BDC,0X8619 98D8 )
does anybody know how to decipher em and know what is causing the bsod? - its vista

anyway i went into safe mode (it doesnt bsod)...i cleaned some crap off it with crapcleaner. i installed malwarebytes but couldnt get it to run??? spybot wouldnt run either?
avg did (in a command line interface) scanned for about 2 hours and found 1 virus (in a pink mp3) so i went to the folder and deleted it.
stopped loads of stuff (about 20 things) from starting at bootup in msconfig
uninstalled loads of crap from add/remove programs.

but still........it bsods when its finished booting in normal mode, hes recently fitted a dvdwriter so ive told him to unplug it and then try booting up again see if it still does it.........if it does then its not the fault of the dvd drive

any ideas?

Blue screens are usually caused by drivers being screwed up or something similar I think.

When I've had BSODs with XP, I've found Windbg most helpful in tracking down the culprit (usually something I would not have suspected!). The instructions I followed for XP were at:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35246

It might be worth trying to see how to run it on Vista.

With BSODs the most important part is usually the Stop error number, in this case 7E. The numbers in the brackets usually aren't important as they are the memory addresses which will usually be different for everybody.
A quick google and search on Microsoft support, points to network card drivers.
I would try starting the computer in safe mode with networking and if it BSODs then that would confirm it.

ah, well ive tried a normal safe mode (no networking) and it DIDNT bsod.......so could be

lol wish i got one of these blue screen messages (http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u90/SilverGromit/bluescreen1.jpg)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330182

What you gave us really isn't any help, you need to catch the blue screen, I find setting a digital camera to record in movie mode, film it, then play back and pause/zoom on the blue screen you can then read it all if it comes up too quick.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330182

What you gave us really isn't any help, you need to catch the blue screen, I find setting a digital camera to record in movie mode, film it, then play back and pause/zoom on the blue screen you can then read it all if it comes up too quick.

that code WAS the error message, the rest was the usual try reinstalling drivers, unplug this, switch off that which arent part of the actual message, they are just stock help messages that come up exactly the same on every bsod

see if i take the example in your url (i saw that one when i searched for the code)

STOP: 0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0x804E518E, 0xFC938104, 0xFC937E04)
SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED

WUSB54GCx86.sys- Address 92D89498 base at 92D7c000, Datestamp 45c04cc9

the only bit i got on his computer was the stop (hex) code, none of the other stuff, when ive had blue screens which happened regularly (till i upgraded my ram and it hasnt happened since) mine would also come up with driver not equal to (or whatever)

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL???

in that case, go here... http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm
do a search on the page (CTRL+F) for your 0x0000007E - it will tell you the cause

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL???

in that case, go here... http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm
do a search on the page (CTRL+F) for your 0x0000007E - it will tell you the cause

yeah that driver ones more or less what i used to get...none of that stuff with this one tho...just the error code i gave...cheers for the link, checking it now

hmmm its looking more and more like hardware incompatabillity
that link, the first result that came up mentioned it.......and somebody on another forum mentioned network card.

so........
ive already told him to try disconnecting the dvd drive he installed just a week ago and to boot up normally, see if it still does it......could be that thats vista incompatable.
might also try removing his network card and boot up see if that makes a difference, i got told to boot up into safe mode with network support cos if its the card that should make it blue screen too?
as it doesnt blue screen in normal safe mode

hmmm its looking more and more like hardware incompatabillity
that link, the first result that came up mentioned it.......and somebody on another forum mentioned network card.

so........
ive already told him to try disconnecting the dvd drive he installed just a week ago and to boot up normally, see if it still does it......could be that thats vista incompatable.
might also try removing his network card and boot up see if that makes a difference, i got told to boot up into safe mode with network support cos if its the card that should make it blue screen too?
as it doesnt blue screen in normal safe mode

He's running Vista? - in that case the likeleyness of you being able to remove the network card is zero to none, (you will probably just have to disable it in the bios) as most are onboard now.

im guessing he has 2GB or more, and an nForce chipset? -- install this.. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=925528&sd=RMVP

errrrrrrrm
well ive not had a look inside his puter
so ill just disable the card then if i cant remove it physically.
he only has 1gb of ram i know that cos i was showing him how to find out how much.....no idea on chipsets

I kept getting the bsod with my newly built pc, running vista 64 and 4GB of ram, turned out that 2 of the memory sticks were ******ed, ran fine one thier own but just wouldn't run with any other memory, runs ok now even with only 2GB of ram at the moment.

I've found that in 99% of bsod in my case they have always been hardware related, find out what he put in last and work from there.