Hardware PC boots up to black screen, need help please.

[JackKnife]

So my friend has a Windows Xp Media Center Edition pc that was working fine yesterday, but today it booted up to a black screen and did nothing. I tried safe mode but I get BSoD, and it gives me this error code, stop 0x0000007b. Can anyone please point me in the right direction?

 

[moose3]

Reboot into safe mode, and look more closely at the BSoD, there is normally something else listed that gives a hint. But just googling the 7b part points to either a bad hard drive, or maybe a usb drive was left attached?

Dying Power supply might cause something, unhook any usb devices, maybe unhook any extra drives (DVD, extra HD) and see if it boots.

 

[fischju]

If you can't get into safe mode without a BSOD in all likelihood it's a hardware failure. If you want to diagnose it any more, you'll need a boot CD. UBCD4Win. http://www.ubcd4win.com/downloads.htm - Download it, burn it, boot it. Run a SMART test on the hard drive with Speedfan, run chkdsk /r. If you can't get into full UBCD4Win, run the original UBCD are launch memtest to test the RAM for errors.

If you have a multimeter you can test the PSU, but you might also blow it up and/or kill yourself if you've never handled one before. Boot the PC, if the fans are still running when it black screens test the 3v, 5v, and 12v rails. You do this by attaching the black lead to the chassis or a gnd in the back of the 20/24 pin MOBO connector. Attach the read to a yellow, red, or orange. They should read 12v, 3.3v, and 5v, ±5% http://pinouts.ru/Power/atxpower_pinout.shtml