Hi there,

I had an HDD failure recently and took the opportunity to get an SSD as a replacement. I did a bit of research and chose an OCZ Agility 4 128GB. Unfortunately I have had no luck installing Windows 7 onto it. I have updated the drive's firmware, enabled SATA AHCI mode, tried 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows but have the same problem each time. The installation looks like it has worked, the PC restarts, waits a bit on "comleting installation" then dies with the blue screen of death showing STOP: 0x0000007E...

I assumed the drive was faulty so returned it to the shop (YoYo Tech in London) but they installed Windows fine on it so won't take it back. I am using quite an old system (Q9550, Intel DP35DP) but Google searches reveal others that are using SSDs with this hardware.

I can only think it's some sort of BIOS or driver issue but I don't know where to begin checking. The BIOS is the latest version.

Can anyone help or give me any pointers?

Many thanks.

This might be worth a read?

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/win dows-7-error-stop0x0000007e-0xffffffffc000001d/0897959a-cf43-43b1-9cb4-0a3c5743434e

Dave.

Thanks Dave. I'd read lots of articles, but not that one and it backs up my realisation that this is an AV problem .

Strangely I got Windows installed last night after plugging the drive into a different SATA socket. Was all fine until I installed BitDefender 2013, at which point the BSODs started again. And I now realise that all the problems I've been having with dying PCs and iTunes not syncing correctly started when I updated BitDefender to the 2013 version.

Think I'll just use Microsoft SE from now on.

Thanks again.

I had bsod with Norton and also when using PC Tools spyware doctor. Now I use Microsoft Security Essentials, and everything runs very smoothly.
MSE got very good reviews recently, so everything is fine.
Btw. my technician (building PC's) does not reccomend AHCI. He has stopped installing HDD's with AHCI.

Quote Indigo2:

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Btw. my technician (building PC's) does not reccomend AHCI. He has stopped installing HDD's with AHCI.

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I would find a new technician then.

Virtually all bench tests give better results with AHCI.

You won't get Trim unless your using AHCI

You need AHCI to get NCQ (native command queuing)

AHCI also allows hot swapping.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Command_Queuing

Quote Ojustaboo:

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I would find a new technician then.

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Yep. Fitting an SSD without AHCI is a rather foolish idea. The benefits for mechanicals are also well worth it too.

Don't forget to set the board to use RAID if you ever want to use RAID in the future.

Choosing AHCI will not allow you to do this in BIOS, although it may be possible in the OS via the alternative software method but I've made this mistake and I believe it can be worked out by using the microsoft 'fix it' or the registry fix that is similar to when having to set AHCI after the OS was installed in IDE mode. At least I hope it works like that, I'm about to give it a shot....

Here is a link to the Microsoft Fix IT article with the manual how to:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

When installing Windows 7 to me Samsung 830, I made sure there were no partitions and just clicked next and let Windows set aside the 100MB backup recovery partition it so likes and also of course the main installation partition automatically. I didn't have any problems. I did read this article beforehand. SSD Optimisation

Now I'd recommend you take certain things with a pinch of salt. I've done a fair share of the tweaks but YMMV.

I hope you get it resolved. I hope I've helped somewhat.

I'd also recommend MSE.

EDIT, sure enough utilising that Microsoft fix has allowed me to change from AHCI to RAID on my system.