Windows XP, M2N-E and 0x0000007b (0xf7c7a63c, 0x0000034,0x0000000

There are several games (most importantly Black and White 2) that I wanted to try over the summer, but that requires me to install Windows XP. So I grabbed an installation CD and plugged it in. After the computer booted off the CD, loaded all the drivers, gave a message “Starting Windows…”, it blue screened giving me the following error:

stop:0x0000007b (0xf7c7a63c, 0x0000034,0x0000000″

It had something to do with missing drivers for my motherboard’s SCSI or RAID conroller. However I do not have a floppy drive, so pressing F6 at the beginning was out of the question. For thoes wondering, I have an Asus M2N-E motherboard.

In the end, I fixed it thanks to eighter of two steps I undertook before trying again.

1) Installing the latest BIOS. That was easy, I just downloaded the BIOS version 1001 from the Asus website, unzipped it and placed the .bin file on my USB memory stick. Then during the initial boot screen I quickly held down the Delete key and entered the BIOS Setup utility. Next I had to find the EZ Flash tool (located under Too and launch it. It detected my memory stick perfectly, and I was able to select the new BIOS and update.

2) This is the step that I believe was the actual soution: disabling the RAID controller. The M2N-E comes with an on board RAID controller that I do now use, because I have only one disk. In the BIOS Setup it is possible to enable and disable disks that are being used in RAID setups, but also you can disable the entire controller. If you are getting the same error as I am, make sure that the controller is disabled. It’s not enough for the RAID configuration for all SATA disks to be disabled! Of course, you will still be able to use any disks connected through SATA, just not RAID them.

If none of the above solutions work, it might be that you have faulty hardware. Make sure to check that your memory is ok, because some people are reporting that leaving only one memory stick plugged it solved the problem for them.