Stop error 0x000008e using external hard drive

**skeeter** · March 30th, 2004, 07:03 PM

Hello all, first off this is a wonderful forum. If anyone knows how to help me this is the place. I have and newer Hp laptop running windows xp. I can list all the stats but I dont think they are the problem. Everything was working fine until I decided to get an external hard drive that plugs into the firewire IEEE 4-pin port. At first the computer recognized the extra drives and life was good. Then I started getting occasional blue stop screen when I plugged, unplugged the hard drive. Then i started getting the blue screen after i tried to go to my desktop after the xp welcome screen. I spent 2 hrs on the phone with hp (-fun) they had me go into safe mode and into msconfig and disable my startup properties. I then had to repair the xp system from the cd. Then everything seemed to work and it asked me if I wanted to change the startup properties back to the normal, which i did. Bam, another blue screen. So i figure something on the startup/task bar is causing the stop message. How do I change or fix this so that I can use the external hard drive? Or do I just need to take the thing back?

It is an IO gear 120Gb hard drive, I have emailed them with this question and no respose.

Here is the Stop error

Stop 0x0000008e (0xc0000005, 0xF7AC78B2, 0XEC01BC10, 0X0000000
Stop sysdrv.sys - address F7AC78B2 base at F7AC7000, datestamp 4021c60f

everytime this happens the only way I can get past the welcome screen is to repair the Xp OS which takes 30 min each time. right now everythings works but only because most items in the task bar are disabled, and I am gunshy about pluggin in the external hard drive.
I am hoping someone has an idea of what to do. Thank you sooo much for any help.

**+Daemon+** · March 30th, 2004, 07:20 PM

let me look more into this, but it sounds like your memory might be bad

Are you running service pack 1? And have all the windows updates? Latest drivers and bios update?

**skeeter** · March 30th, 2004, 07:28 PM

The Hp people had me re-seat the memory and pull the internal hard drive(both didnt do anything for the blue screen of joy) and it has 2x256 cards. It never had any type of problem before using the external hard drive. Yes I have gone to the MS website and down loaded all updates. I did do some of the updates after turning disabling the startup/task bar stuff, now I am just leery of trying to reproduce the error before I get a handle on what is causing it. I have had to repair the OS twice now. BY the way you folks are awesome.

**+Daemon+** · March 30th, 2004, 07:30 PM

Originally Posted by skeeter

The Hp people had me re-seat the memory and pull the internal hard drive(both didnt do anything for the blue screen of joy) and it has 2x256 cards. It never had any type of problem before using the external hard drive. BY the way you folks are awesome

is this a new firewire card? pcmcia card?

**skeeter** · March 30th, 2004, 07:36 PM

The laptop is still "as is" out of the box. HP ze4630us with an AMD athlon 2500+ 1.87 proccessor. 40 gb hard drive. 512 RAM. No new cards or anyhting ive added.

**+Daemon+** · March 30th, 2004, 07:43 PM

k, well any electronics out of the box doesnt mean its good just a FYI. From that stop number you posted every article from microsoft goes after bad memory.

If you havnt put any new drivers on, I sugguest getting some new drivers if thy are newer than what you have. Also if its right out of the box you will need to get the windows updates, which could help.

link to your drivers

http://h20015.www2.hp.com/en/softwar...etype=software