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freaky2000
Contributor
Contributor

Windows 2000 SP3 0x7b after tools upgrade in 3.5u4

Hi there,

recently they updated the ESX servers here from 3.5u2 to 3.5u4. After upgrading one of the windows 2000 machines, which is still on SP3 btw, booted fine, had the vmware tools upgraded and never came up anymore.

The error it gives is the infamous STOP: 0x0000007b. Several other 2000 machines had the tools updated, but they are all at SP4 and working fine.

Tried disabling several drivers, replacing the vmscsi.sys with the one from the driver floppy image, tried the PE vmware driver fix CD (don't recall the name) and several other things like switching to LSI Logic. Nothing seems to help. Currently retrieving a 3.5.0u2 image to see if I can get the vmscsi.sys from there to see if the older one will work (guessing/hoping it will have to do with SP3 and the vmscsi.sys depending on something in SP4).

Any suggestions are very welcome at this point. The server has a lot of custom software, most of which was written by people that no longer work here and most software they don't have with installers etc. Rebuilding it will probably be next to impossible.

Kind regards & TIA

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4 Replies
freaky2000
Contributor
Contributor

Forgot to mention, 0x0000007B is inaccessible boot device.

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RParker
Immortal
Immortal

Time for a repair. Run the CD install for Windows, and run the repair option. You can use Windows 2000 SP4 CD ISO if you have one, otherwise you are going to be there for a while... That's probably the only option, unless you feel like reinstalling the programs.

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freaky2000
Contributor
Contributor

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't repair install often break programs by it's registry modifications? Kinda afraid of that, especially since they have no clue what's running on it.

Got one clone to boot now, unfortunately I can't reproduce it. Other people have also been working on this clone to get it back up before me. Last thing I did to get it to work was remove every entry under DeviceClasses in the registry. Apparently it helped, unfortunately it leaves me with an unusable machine as it doesn't recognize keyboard/mouse and network doesn't seem to function either. Boots well though, also in safe mode, but still no keyboard mouse then. Will be working on both the clones now, I'll try to reinsert some of the deviceclass entries to see if I can get keyboard etc. back.

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freaky2000
Contributor
Contributor

Found the solution by shotgun approach.

Deleting registry entries like a moron I finally found out that under (note that the GUID might change, during my tests in which I deleted loads of keys some classes, like 'Display Adapters' reappeared under a different GUID):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E97D-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

there was a key called UpperFilters. Not yet sure what it does... But it pointed to some CPQPHP thingy. This is a P2V machine and by going through the register I noted a LOT[/b] of left behind driver crap.

Please note that I used ERD Commander to edit the registry. This apparently creates the CurrentControlSet as if it actually exists. Normally when the machine is offline it's called ControlSet001, so where you have to edit might depend on your register editor.

Anyways, thanks to anyone who (tried to) help(ed) and hope this will help somebody in the future. Took us nearly 2 days...

Reg export (part of it):

"Class"="System"@="System devices""Icon"="-27""UpperFilters"=hex(7):43,00,50,00,51,00,50,00,48,00,50,00,00,00,00,00

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