Get BSOD upon boot up with XP Pro sp2 (0x0000007E )

[Shep]

I'm having some trouble with my desktop computer. I have XP Pro sp2, a 500gb SATA drive, and everything was working fine. I didn't start noticing trouble until I set up a dual boot with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. About a month later, when I boot up to XP I get the Blue Screen of Death with the following message:

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again follow these steps:

(Talks about Bios and Hard drive space, which neither is an issue)

STOP: 0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0xBA11F868, 0xBACDFD10, 0xBACDF90C)

Now, I've done a search on 0x0000007E and found that it can be related to graphics. This seems to be true, because I can boot up in Safe Mode, uninstall my Nvidia driver, reboot using the default driver from XP, reinstall the latest Nvidia driver, reboot, and my system is up.

However, the next time I reboot or shut down my computer -- The same BSOD will return when I start my computer back up. This is happening constantly now. I can still do the above fix, but it will only last as long as I don't reboot. Sometimes I can reboot and it'll be okay, but most of the time the BSOD will return.

Does anyone know what could be causing this and how to fix it? Is Windows corrupt, and do I need to repair or reinstall it? Is it my graphics chip, and if so will installing a new video card fix it?

Thanks for your help. My computer stats are below.

GIGABYTE GA-M61P-S3 Socket AM2 Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz Socket AM2

North Bridge NVIDIA GeForce 6100

South Bridge NVIDIA nForce 430

2 gig Kingston DDR2 800

Windows XP Pro SP2

Realtek ALC883, 8 channel sound

Soundblaster Audigy

500gb SATA

[antinouskalisto]

One very easy thing I would check first is the temperature of the heatsink on your GPU/Graphics Card.

[cluberti]

From windbg:

Bug Check 0x7E: SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
The SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED bug check has a value of 0x0000007E. This bug check indicates that a system thread generated an exception that the error handler did not catch.

Parameters
The following parameters appear on the blue screen.

Parameter Description 
1 The exception code that was not handled 
2 The address where the exception occurred 
3 The address of the exception record 
4 The address of the context record 


Cause
The SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED bug check is a very common bug check. To interpret it, you must identify which exception was generated.

Common exception codes include the follwoing:
...
0xC0000005: STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION indicates a memory access violation occurred. 
...

Resolving the Problem
If you are not equipped to debug this problem, you should use some basic troubleshooting techniques. 

- Make sure you have enough disk space. 
- If a driver is identified in the bug check message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. 
- Try changing video adapters. 
- Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. 
- Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing.

[Shep]

Well, I think I narrowed the problem down. It's not Linux, that's for sure.

I came home from work today, and behold the computer no longer boots up. Well, at least I can't see what it's doing. I get no picture at all. Just to play it safe, I took out my sound card, disconnected my drives, and even took the memory out (just in case it was the memory).

The computer turns on. The fans turn, the processor fan spins, and the hard drive lights up and stays lit up (even though I disconnected my hard drive). No picture. No POST, no bios screen, nothing. I am thinking that the onboard graphics chip is fried. The computer is well ventilated and has plenty of fans blowing in it. I don't really know if the chip got hot or not. My computer never felt hot.

I'm guessing that the motherboard is okay, otherwise it wouldn't power up at all. Is that correct? If I plug in a graphics card, will that get around the problem? Does anyone have any experience with onboard graphics chips? I loved it at first, and now I'm thinking it probably wasn't such a good idea.