Blue screen when re-install windows XP on Optiplex 780

XP has no native drivers for SATA controllers, so it doesn't know how to communicate with a SATA drive.  That is what the 0x7b means.  You might be able to set SATA operation to ATA or Compatability Mode in the BIOS (F2), but I wouldn't recommend it, as it will run as a standard ATA/IDE device and you won't be able to take advantage of what SATA has to offer (NCQ, cache, etc.).  What you need to do is load the drivers for the SATA controller.  It will be one of the following:

Probably:

If not, try this one:

You will need to download these files and may need to unblock them (right-click, Properties, Unblock), then run to extract the files and put them on a floppy disk and load during the Windows Setup at the F6 prompt.  Alternatively, you can use nLiteOS.com to integrate the drivers into your installation media (this is easiest - choose Multiple Driver Files, select all available, then select TextMode).

By the way ... what software that you have that is not compatible with 64-bit?  Windows 7x64 has phenominal compatability with 32-bit software.  I'm only aware of ONE program that will not run because of the 32/64-bit question (although some software is known not to run on Windows 7 at all).

Another possibility is to install XP Mode, which is a preconfigured Virtual Machine of XP running from within Windows 7.  Shortcuts to those XP applications can be put in your Windows 7 Start Menu or on your Desktop or Taskbar and run in XP directly from Windows 7.  This requires at the Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate versions, as only they include the license to run XP.  You can do the same type of thing using virtualization software, but you will need to install XP yourself as a virtual machine, and you would have to have a valid license to run XP on it (open/volume license, unused Retail license).

I think the problem relates to your RAM. This blue screen usually appears because of having problem with RAM.

Although a problem with RAM is a possibility, there is nothing about what he has said that indicates a memory problem.  0x7b is related to the STORAGE DRIVER.

Thank you for replying my post. The software I am using is a Point-Of-Sale program, called Retail ICE, for a retail store. We bought this program a few years ago before Win 7 came out. I can still install the program, but just couldn't connect with the receipt printer.

I will try to load the driver you recommend and see how it goes. Do you know if this process is reversible? In case it doesn't work out, I can still bring the system back to the original setup.  

As soon as you install XP - whether you "dual-boot" or install over the top of 7* - you will have to have Windows 7 reinstallation disks to go back to Windows 7, as the Recovery Partition normally used for this purpose will no longer work.  But Dell should be able to supply you with the disks so you can at least get back to Windows 7.

Theflash is correct. The 7B error is happening because BIOS isn't set to RAID Autodetect/ATA and you didn't install the SATA driver from a floppy disk during the XP installation by pressing F6 when prompted.

As indicated you can install the SATA drivers after installing XP, but then you have to be sure to go back into BIOS seti[ before the next boot to change the SATA Operation mode back to RAID/AHCI.

Before you installed XP, did you try setting the compatibility mode for that software to XP in Win 7? That might have let you use it without installing XP. Too late now...

Ron

Fortunately,  Dell offers XP drivers for this system.

Go to support.dell.com, click the drivers&download button and insert the model number for this system. Be sure to select XP as your OS on the next screen to get the right list of drivers. You'll need to know the hardware that's installed.

Drivers have to be installed in the correct order, XP followed by:

System Utilties (system software)

Chipset driver

Video driver

Audio driver

Network driver

etc.

If you didn't install the SATA drivers from a floppy during the XP installation, you will need to install them from the link above. Then reboot and go into BIOS setup to change SATA Operation to RAID/AHCI. Save that change and allow it to reboot.

Ron

Hello, I just happened to pass by this post when looking for the solution myself. I was also having BSOD at first but was able to resolve that after I did the following:

For faster windows xp installation I slipstream SP2 and SP3 (I had a winxp w/ sp1) and all the other drivers needed for Optiplex (in this case the SATA drivers are causing the BSOD I think), for reference mine was missing the video driver, network card, audio, and SM bus controller (some might be just part of the chipset driver). I did all of this with Nlite.

http://www.nliteos.com/

Nlite is very easy to learn for slipstreaming. Trust me if we be way faster to learn Nlite than to wait for the download of SP2 and SP3 and install and other driver. If you are using a corporate account like me in your company, the unattended setup is pretty sweet (+1 for lazyness and +1 for coolness and not typing the product key anymore)

I could have downloaded all the hotfixes and maybe drivers for other types of desktop to make this a all around xp install dvd. Right now I just installed winxp into a Optiplex 780 w/sp3 and currently downloading some 100+ updates.

Hopes this helps

So I had this same problem, and what fixed it was finding the Dell OEM disk that came with my 780. I believe that this worked because it has the appropriate storage drivers. There's that step where you can hit F6 or something like that to give a generic XP install disk a chance to load drivers, and if I had the storage drivers ready for that, doing so might have been another way to get this done.

It is more likely that your OEM disk worked because it had SP3 than because it was Dell OEM.  Dell does not put storage drivers in their media, however SP3 added a few of the most popular chipset drivers.

This happens to be an SP2 disk, but it may have been drivers that were added for SP2, as well. This making the technology work, out of the tombs of the Pharaohs, is getting old.....

"out of the tombs of the Pharaohs" ... anymore, doesn't that define XP?

Since SP3 pre-dated the Optiplex 780 by nearly two years, if you used "the Dell OEM disk that came with my 780", it should have had SP3 on it.

Yeah, it's now pretty clear to me that while this XP SP2 disk got me past the BSOD on install problem, it's missing other nice things, such as certain drivers, for this machine. So this OEM install CD must have been for an older Dell.

You probably have your SATA controller set to ATA.  If you set SATA Operation in the BIOS to ATA instead of AHCI, you don't need drivers, but you also turn off all features of SATA that makes it better than ancient ATA/IDE technology.  As there are no Dell-specific drivers of any kind on a Dell disk, you need to get those from support.dell.com (although I'm sure you know that by now ;)).