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I know normally it is the other way around, but after some hacking in the registry on two Windows XP Home SP3 machines, they boot fine in normal mode and work without problems but when booting into Safe Mode, I get a Stop Message 0x0000007B.

The story is that the client had DeepFreeze 5 installed (which we tried to get rid of), they forgot all passwords and don't have the original Setup files to uninstall it.

So I searched around and found a tip to manually remove the kernel mode driver from the registry. After doing this, I got the behaviour above.

Does anybody has any insight on why safe mode could fail, while normal mode works?

Peter Hahndorf
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  • I used the /sos parameter in the boot.ini and filmed the screen as ntbtlog.txt was empty. The last driver loaded/listed was Mup.sys. The next driver loaded in normal boot is intelppm.sys. – Peter Hahndorf Jul 04 '09 at 04:12

2 Answers2

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Deep freeze uses a kernel mode drive to write back any information to a seperate (ideally blank) partition on a hard drive. This is to prevent any writing to the kernel/os. When you try to load in safe mode the kernel mode driver will not load, and windows will not be able to load correctly. In normal mode you must still have a trace of deep freeze installed to allow normal operation. How you are going to fix this without the passwords and software to uninstall is going to be very difficult. I recommend backing up important data as a precaution in normal mode then run a repair install.

user10711
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With Deep Freeze your problem is most likely to be the driver for the hard drive.

Try something like this:

  1. Start the computer with the Windows CD.

  2. At the Welcome to Setup screen, press R to select the repair option.

  3. Enter the Administrator password (if you have one).

  4. In the recovery console go to the C:\Windows\System32\Drivers directory.

  5. Rename DEEPFRZ.SYS DEEPFRZ_SYS.old and press ENTER

  6. Type Exit and press ENTER

  7. Take the Windows disc out and reboot.

Hope this helps!

KPWINC
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  • There was no need for booting from a CD, as I was able to rename or remove all DeepFreeze files in normal mode. DeepFreeze is no longer active, but Safe Mode fails to boot. – Peter Hahndorf Jul 04 '09 at 04:08