Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of westone
westoneFlag for United States of America

asked on

Video driver failed to initialize STOP ERROR

I have a Windows XP Home computer that is failing to start with a STOP ERROR 0x000000B4 The Video Driver Failed to Initialize. During start up, the Windows XP splash screen appears, then disappears, then the blue stop error screen flashes by in a split second and the machine restarts. I had to watch it restart about 2 dozen times to get the stop error.

It will not boot into Safe Mode, Last Known Good, VGA or Command Prompt. I attempted a Repair Install, but when the setup program reboots, the machine goes back into a restart loop.

The machine has an on board video card. When the local computer store opens in about 45 minutes I plan to purchase a PCI video card to see if in fact that is the problem. I just wanted to check in here and see what else I should be checking in the mean time, to try to avoid a complete re-install.

Thanks,
Bill
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Speshalyst
Speshalyst
Flag of India image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of westone

ASKER

That post had no successful solution, and the offered solutions do not apply: This is not a Windows 2000 OS, The parallel port is already set to 0378, this is not a Micron Powerdigm XSU dual-processor machine, and as I mentioned Last Known Good does not work.
Avatar of westone

ASKER

Well, thanks for the effort anyway. I put in a PCIe video card, and it did the same thing. I ran the non-destructive Compaq System Recovery, and it still did the same thing. Doing the complete re-install now. Man I hate when I spend good time trying to avoid the complete re-install and end up doing it anyway. But doesn't happen often. And if I could predict the future, well, we would be having this discussion would we?
I have the very same problem.  Tried different video cards but nothing worked.  Going to reinstall...
Avatar of westone

ASKER

Did the computer you have this problem with recently suffer an infection of XP Antivirus 2008, or similar virus? The one I worked on did just prior to have the stop error problem and I was wondering if they might be related.

FYI: I had attached the HDD to my laptop and cleaned up all the virus, including registry startup items for HKLM and HKCU and HKLM Winlogon Notify subkeys, using offline edit, but this did not affect the stop error problem.
No, but it did have some minor spyware.
Avatar of keewaa
keewaa

Wonder why there is an accepted solution when it doesn'#t solve anything ?

Anyway ....

This is a virus , probably caused by the XP antivirus 2008.

Reattach it to the laptop, look in the  %windir%\system32\drivers folder on it, and if the beep.sys file is 16k instead of 5k then it is the beep.sys virus, delete it and replace it with the one of 5k from your laptop %windir%\system32\drivers folder . This will allow it to boot and you can run more scans then to clean up anything left. ;)
Avatar of westone

ASKER

Well, if you had been here a week ago I would have been happy to give you some points for at least making an effort.