Vista - Vista crashes after WinUpdate - BSOD with Stop:0x0000007B

I had - foolishly - let my PC update itself with regular updates so kindly provided by Microsoft. Last evening, I allowed another update to install and voila after restart, Vista now crashes without fail.

I get the following STOP error:

STOP: 0X0000007B (0X80599BB0, 0XC000034, 0X00000000, 0X00000000)

I have tried the following recovery steps as outlined in many forums:

1. Startup Repair tool - the actual process fails to repair anything but the details do mention that 'a patch is preventing startup'

2. System restore - I can see 3 different restore points, one for a canon camera driver installation and two for each Windows Update installations. Restoring to all 3 tried consecutively, all succeed but when Vista restarts I get the same error again.

3. BIOS update - I read somewhere that this STOP error is caused by the mismatch of SATA and ACHI drivers. I went into my BIOS and the settings seemed fine, the drive was in IDE emulation mode so it shouldn't be the cause. I still carried out a BIOS update but that has not solved the problem.

What other options do I have? Re-installing Vista is the very last thing I wanna do, because that would mean backing up so many folders (Ny Documents, Program Files, registry etc) and I really do not want to have to do that if there is even a remote chance the problem could get solved any other way.

Over to you guys.

Hi nophster, Welcome to the forum.

Did you try selecting AHCI? to see if it makes a difference

Thank you, yes I have tried that. I switched between 'AHCI' and 'IDE' while toggling between 'Legacy' and 'Native' but that didn't help either. My BIOS does detect my Seagate Barracuda 500 GB HDD on SATA Slot 0, if that helps.

None of the obvious solutions work, what could have been in the Windows Update? And if System Restore is 'successful' and the system still won't boot that just means there is something wrong in the startup before it loads into Vista, right?

Yes it would seem to indicate that something is wrong with Boot

Do you have SP1 installed?
Do you have an installation DVD?

Yes I am fairly sure I have SP 1 and yes I do have the installation dvd.

Na what I was thinking wont work, can you start in safe mode?

That was the first thing I tried, doesn't work. None of the startup recovery options work. Well maybe they do 'work' but Vista crashes after 10 seconds into startup so we never find out.

Try doing chkdsk C: /r /p from a command prompt

Are you sure you meant to write "/p"? Chkdsk returns an error of invalid parameter. Maybe you meant "/b"?

I have initiated chkdsk with just the /r parameter, will report back once completed.

Update:
chkdsk concluded successfully, no errors were found. Restarted, same issue.
Btw, while attempting to get to the command prompt through 'Safe mode with command prompt' I noticed that the last driver which was loaded was crcdisk.sys and then it crashed. Does that help?

Chkdsk /p was a mistake
crcdisk.sys would indicate that a driver is at fault the question is how do you want to disable it when you cant start in safe mode?

I think we are running out of options, you could try disconnecting everything that you do not need ie usb/printer remove all but one stick of RAM and then try to start.

If you do a new install, but do not partition or format in any way, accept any messages about an old instalation and wait until it is finished. You will find that it makes a folder called .windows old this will have all your old documents Program files etc in it. You can cut and paste these to the same folders in the new install. When you are finished with this old folder you just delete it. You will still have to install drivers and all the programs that you had b4.

Pooch