July 11th, 2007

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Have you ever tried changing a motherboard in your PC just find out that it won’t boot after the new board is installed? Alas, you’re all set to fire up upgraded powerhouse just to discover the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death”. Typically hardware changes will cause either a Stop 0×0000007B or INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE error that results in having to perform a repair install of Windows XP.

Ah, but not anymore!

It turns out that a very quick and simple trick before installing your new board can prevent this from happening altogether, and it works regardless of the hardware being used!

1. Right-click My Computer and choose Properties… (or just press <Windows> + <Pause/Break>) to open the System Properties dialog box.
2. Click the Hardware tab and then the Device Manager button.
3. Click the + sign next to “IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers”
4. You should see a “Primary IDE Channel”, “Secondary IDE Channel”. Leave these alone. Select the remaining entry. This is your storage device driver. It will typically be some type of UDMA controller. (If more than one is listed, you only need to perform the following operations for the boot drive. If you’re not sure which one is your boot drive, just perform the following operations on each of the remaining entries.)
5. Right-click the driver entry and select Update Driver… to activate the Hardware Update Wizard.
6. If you’re prompted to connect to Windows Update, choose “No, not this time” and click the Next button.
7. Choose “Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)” and click the Next button.
8. Choose “Don’t search. I will choose the driver to install.” and click the Next button.
9. Make sure the box labeled “Show compatible hardware” is checked.
10. Select “Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller” and click the Next button. The wizard will install your newly selected driver.
11. Click the Finish button to close the Update Hardware Wizard
12. Choose No when asked to restart your computer.

This basic driver will prevent your system from hanging with any nasty errors when rebooted with your new motherboard.

NOTE: Some people recommend booting your computer into Safe Mode when booting for the first time after installing a new motherboard, installing your new motherboard drivers, and then rebooting normally. This can help prevent other miscellaneous errors and driver or IRQ conflicts.

The error(s) described in this article are the subject of this Windows XP Resource Kit document.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at 10:40 am and is filed under Windows Administration, Windows Vista, Windows XP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.