Avoiding Stop Error 7B During Initial Boot of the Runtime

Submitted by: Andy Allred, Microsoft

If your runtime bug checks, or blue screens the first time you boot into it and it errors with bug check code 7B, this indicates that you left out a critical boot device. This boot device could include one of the following components: a disk drive, an Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) controller, a primary IDE channel, a secondary IDE channel, a PCI bus, or another boot device.

The two most common causes:

• You have built the hardware configuration yourself without using the tools to query the target machine for its devices.
• You used ta.exe in the bios on the target machine but it returned information that could not be found in the database. This means you could have missed a critical device in the configuration process. If you know the specific component or one that is compatible, such as a generic driver that is in the database, try adding one of these components into your configuration and build the runtime again.

Try one of the following solutions:

• Use tap.exe instead of ta.exe. Using tap can be virtually foolproof and it will determine all devices necessary. You can only run tap from Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Tap will query the registry to identify the correct devices that Windows Setup determined would be best for that machine. Another downside to tap is that it will pull in any devices that it used to install in that machine but were subsequently removed, as well as pull in some software enumerated devices into your configuration that you may not want or need. If this happens, delete the unnecessary component from your configuration.
• The second solution would be to examine device manager in a safe build successfully installed on the target machine. For instance, if you already have Windows XP or Windows 2000 installed, open device manager and identify the critical device listed in Device Manager that is missing from your configuration in Target Designer. Then locate the device with the same display name in Target Designer and add it to your configuration.

These tips are for informational purposes and are provided only as a convenience. The entire risk of use or results in connection with the use of these tips remains with the user.