Problems with a HP Media Centre M7635.
The fault was that a system file was missing. We ran hardware tests - all of which passed. The customer authorised a fresh installation of windows (this particular model ran Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005) shortly after loading the setup files a blue screen was shown. The customer had also reported seeing blue screens prior to the missing system file preventing windows loading.
We tried another hard drive, replaced the SATA cable and even a different CPU and memory but still the blue screen prevailed. HP had a bios update on their site which apparently solved blue screen problems but as it was a windows only bios update how could we install it without being able to get the operating system up and running.
Looking through the BIOS we noticed that the SATA Hard Drive mode as standard is set to RAID, strange as these computers appear to come as standard with only one SATA hard drive (the expansion bay hdd slot is a USB connection). This was changed to IDE mode. After changing this setting the computer loaded windows media center completing the setup and giving us a running computer.
We did a little digging to see if this problem had been reported elsewhere but there's almost nothing out there. So if you're stuck with a blue screen on a HP M7635 try this first - it could save you some time!
Did the BIOS update fix the problem? No! We applied the BIOS update, as standard it wipes the configuration and upon reboot the blue screen is back. When wiping the configuration the SATA hard drive mode defaults to RAID giving the BSOD. We think this is a problem and the default for this setting should be IDE.
If you're a M7635 owner and have experienced this problem please feel free to add your comment below.
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