I am attempting to build a computer from parts around the house. I
have a new 300w mid-tower and put a FIC AZ11 mobo in it with a 800mH
Athlon TB (the mobo and cpu came from a computer that had been working
when I quit using it about 8 months ago). It had a stick of 128 meg
pc-100 left in it. I had previously removed its Maxon hard drive an
put it in another computer. It has a Banshee 16meg video card
installed. I installed a new 3.5 floppy and a 40gig Samsung SV4002H
hard drive that I pulled from my other computer when I installed a
larger Maxon drive. It was working and loaded with Window-XP Home
edition when I pulled it. When I booted after installing this set-up,
the 3.5 drive light comes on, but it does not read the Window's
start-up disk in it. I did check the bios and floppy is the  1st boot
device. I failed to mention that I also had a CD-Rom already
installed. I changed the bios to have cd-rom be the 2nd boot device
but I would not try to boot.  On initial boot, it shows that it does
recognise the hard-drive, the floppy and the cd-rom. It then acts as
though it is going to boot but then gives the blue screen of death and
tells me there is an error in microsoft. Final message is: Stop:
0x0000007B, (0xfeee3640, 0x00000000, 0x00000000) I have changed out
all the cables (ide and floppy) but I still get the same message. Also
changed memory sticks. I do not understand why the computer will not
boot from the floppy as what I want to do is re-format the hard drive
and load Windows Me. I am at the end of my expertise (ended rapidly
didn't it!). I will certainly appreciate your help. My thinking is
that it is now a bad mobo. Thanking you in advance. Raymond

I'd have to say that there's a problem with your motherboard like you
said. It's that or the processor's fried, but you'd have to replace
both anyways in order to make sure. Everything that could have been
swapped out has been with no luck, which just leaves the two main
parts. One more thing you could try is to take out EVERY card except
for the video card. See if it boots off the floppy then. Also, curious
as to why the light for the floppy comes on but you cannot boot off
the floppy, are you sure the floppy cable is in correctly? Meaning,
the red wire should be facing closest to the power cable connected to
the floppy (same with all the hard drives too). Please clarify if you
can get it to boot once you've checked the floppy cable orientation
and removed all cards besides the video card. Also, you said that the
computer recognized the HD and cdrom but please make sure if they're
both on the same IDE channel that one is set to master and the other
one is set to slave. Request clarification once you have completed the
steps I have suggested and I will respond to this question. Good luck!

skermit-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by rdl01-ga on 28 May 2002 19:22 PDT

I have tried two different floppy cables and even tried them hooked up
both ways (that is red wire closest to power cable and flipped). When
it is opposite power cable, there is no light and the bios does not
show a 3.5 drive initially. When it is plugged in correctly, the bios
recognises it and the green light stays on, but know reading activety.
This is a new Mitsumi floppy as I assumed the old one was dead
initially. The bios recognises the HD as master and the cd-rom as
slave on the 1st IDE channel. They are both set according to their
diagrams for master and slave. When I put the cd-rom for 1st boot its
light came on showing it was active but did not attempt to boot. There
are two other PCI cards on the board, a modem and a sound card. The
video card shows up properly at the beginning of boot. These cards
were the ones on the mobo originally. The Windows start disk was a
newly created one and I did attempt to use both Windows SE and Windows
Me CDs for booting, but no activety. Tried booting with PCI cards
removed to no avail. Have not tried using the hard drive in another
computer yet, but did try using another hard drive with this mobo with
no luck. Any more suggestions? Thanks for all the suggestions so far,
but I have already tried them. Thanking you in advance, Raymond

---

Clarification of Answer by skermit-ga on 28 May 2002 21:07 PDT

Since you've switched everything out including removing all cards, and
replacing floppy drive and cables, checked the master / slave
settings, and made sure you had working boot disks, the only other
possibility would be that your motherboard's trashed. I don't
understand why though, if you changed out the hard drive with another
one that you would get that same 0x0000007B error as before though, as
according to that knowledgebase article it's only supposed to happen
with a corrupted boot sector.

Did not tell me anything that I hadn't already stated

You have probably already checked this, but it may be something as
simple with a floppy or floppy drive problem.  It's very common to use
an old machine for months without using the floppy drive only to
reformat it and find out you can't boot a boot disk.  Similarly,
magnetic media does not last forever.  Your first boot floppy may
simply be corrupted.  It may even be a combination of the two, your
aging floppy drive having trouble reading an old floppy.

To rule this out, take your floppy drive and put it in another machine
that you know is in working order.  Try to boot your floppy disk on
the same drive but in that other machine.  Alternatively, take a known
working floppy drive with a known working boot disk and place it in
your nonfunctional machine.

I have personally had both of these problems occur in the past and
this would be the first place I would look based on your problem
description.  Make sure to test this out before you go buying new ram
or a motherboard.  It may end up being something as simple as a $15
trip to the local computer store for a floppy drive.

Good luck!

eniac-ga

Did you already check out the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article?

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q122926

Did the video card work previously with that motherboard, or was it
out of another machine? I have frequently put machines together out of
miscellaneous parts for non-profit organizations that I've been
involved in, and that's been a frequent problem.  Try swapping the
video card if these other suggestions (all common problems) don't work
out for you.

There are strong chances that the hard disk has failed. I have faced
the same problem some time back. If u have disconnected the hard disk
while power On....then i would say u check your hard disk..also istead
of giving your floppy as first boot device use the CDROM as your first
boot device. Try booting from a windows 98 CD ROM and then try
repartitioning...booting from the win98 CD ROM is far better and
reliable that win98 startup floppy. try this and let me kow what is
the result. and please let me know the details of what u actually see
on the screen.

I think the key here is getting away from trying to answer the
questions directly. Instead I suggest trying to provide proper Problem
Determination methodology to isolate the problem....

First of all have a read over this site. Has some good info on proper
installation technique and setup... (for socket 7, but everything else
is the same)
http://www.efacorp.com/support/guides/soc7guide.htm

First and foremost... Pull everything out of the machine. Leave
nothing but the CPU. You should get a beep-code from the motherboard
indicating a Video Card Failure (generally 1 long followed by 2 short
beeps (see http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm)).

Depending on the post order however you may get a memory error (1
long, 3 short).

Assuming you get the above error codes you Mother board is passing the
basic post and properly failing the extended.

Next install the memory, and try again. Once again you should still
get a post beep error for failed video.

Next put the video card in. It should now post successfully and prompt
you to insert a disk to boot...

Next up is the floppy drive. If the access light comes on and stays on
when you power up the machine it generally means that the cable is on
backwards. Also keep in mind that the last connector on the floppy
cable is for drive A:, the middle connector is for drive B:.

If you cannot get the floppy drive working then it is possible you
have a Motherboard, cable or drive problem. Try another drive if
possible, or try the drive and cable in question in another machine to
isolate them.

If the floppy does work at this time I would go ahead and install a
single harddrive and test. Make sure the Bios detects the drive and
that you can view it in DOS.

If you do isolate the problem to being a motherboard issue it is
possible that it is only a problem with the Floppy controller. You may
want to try setting up the machine with no floppy by using a bootable
CD, or installing the Harddrive into another machine, making it
bootable and copying over the Windows Installation files.

Going to keep this short for now. Hope this is a good starting
point...

Bedpan