Saturday, May 12, 2012

Fixing the STOP 0x7B error when upgrading motherboards and cpu, in Windows 7

I recently upgraded my motherboard and, not wanting to have to re-install Windows completely, I tried simply swapping out the motherboard, cpu and ram. MANY people on the internet will tell you that this is impossible and you will have to do a complete re-install. THEY ARE WRONG.

I went from a Core 2 Duo e6600 with a Gigabyte GA-G31M-E2SL to an Ivy Bridge i5- 3570k with a Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H.

If you simply do the swap as I did, you will very likely encounter the dreaded BSOD with the STOP 0x7B error. This is due to the hard drive controller being different between the two boards. The fix I did is here. I cannot take credit for this fix, it was originally posted by dcoetzee here.

1) Make sure you know if your old bios had your hard drives running in IDE or AHCI. It should be set the same when you install the new board.

2) Burn a copy of Hiren's boot CD. here

3) Go into Control Panel > Device Manager, and write down all drivers that are named with your chipset. For example, under your IDE Controllers, you might have Intel Series 6 Serial ATA Controller. Update these drivers to a "standard" controller or driver. It should be an available compatible driver type when you try to update the driver.

4) Install your new motherboard/cpu. It's probably best to keep the parts to a minimum for the moment (just your OS harddrives, no unnecessary peripherals).

5) Start up, make sure the IDE/AHCI setting in the bios is the same on the new board.

6) Boot into Hiren's boot CD

7) Select miniXP

8) Open up Hiren's BootCD program launcher

9) Programs > Registry > Fix hard disk controller

10) enter in your windows directory. If Hiren's isn't detecting your drive, make sure the IDE/AHCI setting is the same!

11) run it

12) That shoud be it! Reboot, and you should be able to get into Windows 7. I would immediately put in your motherboard drivers CD and update all the drivers. Also update all the drivers you changed in Step 3. The "Standard" drivers will likely work, but it's nice to have the ones optimal for your mobo.

I spent hours trying to find this very simple fix. I hope this helps someone on the internet find a solution.

10 comments:

  1. Indeed it did! Thanks heaps Ed, that just saved me a whole heap of pain!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Man. You just make my day a lot better!!! Thanks a lot!!! Regards from Brazil!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Ed,

    I also ran into this issue (0x7B on Win7 after replacing mobo). I was able to get around it by having Win7 pull in the drivers from the DVD that came w/ the mobo, per this post I found: http://www.dowdandassociates.com/content/howto-repair-windows-7%E2%84%A2-install-after-replacing-motherboard

    Most important points there are the last screenshot (showing cmd prompt) and the 1st comment (suggesting to use mobo DVD).

    Basically, you run the following at System Recovery's command prompt:

    dism /Image:D\ /Add-Driver /Driver:E:\ /Recurse

    (where D is the Windows drive letter and E is the DVD drive letter)

    I'll note that /Driver:E:\ loaded all the Win7 drivers off the DVD but Windows still wouldn't boot. So, I ran the above command again but with /Driver:E:\drivers\chipet (basically, pointing it directly at the chipset folder on the DVD). Then Windows booted up.

    HTH!,
    -Aaron

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes! It worked for me too. Thanks a million.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Man, you saved my life! Thanks for this tip!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad people are still finding this helpful!

      Delete
  6. Man, you saved my life! Many thanks for this tip!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Oh, thank you, it really worked! I had to swap my old AMD motherboard with a newer Intel (Haswell) and I was succesfull, thanks to you tip :)

    I only had to reactivate Windows. Yay :D

    ReplyDelete