I have an ACER laptop (Win xp Home SP2 Pentium M 1.5Ghz) which has suddenly decided to act up and give me a BSOD. Got it into safe mode and disabled the auto start to read the error message which follows but dont have aclue what it means. Can anyone explain - please?

STOP: 0X0000007E (0XC0000005, 0XAAEC54D0, 0XF88A3FC8, 0XF88A3CC4)

thanks

I just did a quick search on google for the first set of numbers as that is normally the general issue and the rest of the numbers describe the problem in more detail.

STOP: 0X0000007E

microsoft say that its to do with upgrading to XP?! i dunno if that applies to you at all..
After some more searching i found this:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic21621.html

this may help you as someone talks about partitions on the HDD and I know that ACER partition their drives as well..
you may want to check it out.
Let me know if this is of any use to you

BSOD continuation

thanks for the suggestions. You are right I havent upgraded to XP but will have a read of the link you gave. Yes ACER do partition the drive but again I havent been messing about with that - in fact I barely use the partitioned drive.

I have remembered that chdsk did start up last week when I switched on and I let it run - nothing unusual found but that must have been the beginnings of the whole problem. Thing is I cant remember if I did anything different last week like installing software

post 5-6 of the most recent minidumps here in a .zip
they can be located in the %systemroot%\minidumps folder, where systemroot is the windows directory.

maybe wise to run a chkdsk /f again, defrag, and a hdd diagnostic if needed...
what environment changes has the laptop experienced? software/hardware etc..? <--if you remember anything else that is...
drivers up to date? temps ok? clean from infections?

it may be smart to backup your important data, if it does become a problem relating to the hdd...

only found one minidump but stuck it on anyway. Also put on most recent event logs but I dont see anything that seems the culprit - correct me if I am wrong.

I ran chkdsk but it wont let me do /f - says it cant lock the drive. Drive is FAT32 if that makes any difference. currently running defrag. no massive changes in environment. software - added a program and uninstalled it Ok. hardware - only new thing used recently was an external floppy drive so no drivers needed.

I had already backed up my working files but not happy at the thought of perhaps having to reinstall everything.

Your minidump is crashed at ZoneAlarm. However one minidump is insufficent to confirm the culprit. Un-install ZoneAlarm. If it still crashes, run memtest to stress test the ram.

You are a genius!! Success though I must say I was a bit sceptical as ZA has been on the laptop since I bought it last summer. I assume there was an update recently that put it wrong otherwise why would it be working OK for so long. I also have it on my other machine and touch wood thats working fine.

Computers - who'd have them!

thanks again for all the suggestions
Liz

since ZA isnt working for you, i recommend Sygate Firewall. i also had problems with ZA, but Sygate hasnt given me any problems :grinthumb