BSOD 0x0000007E (VERY STRANGE)

My computer has been restarting itself recently (most likely BSOD), i dont know why, i did update my drivers but the BSOD'd didn't start straight away it was a few days later.

I started to get mesages saying registry had to be loaded from a backup copy, and my onboard sound sort of stops working every now and again and have to reinstall the driver. When it sort of stops working it works for windows sounds like logging on/off, and the sound you here when opening a folder, but wont work for any media player, when i try to use SndVol32.exe i get an error message about an audio mixer device not being installed when it is. I've reccently started getting a message in IE7 saying im not connected to the internet and wanting me to retry, dont know if its related somehow.

I've tried system restore and it didn't fix the problem. So i did a bit of pc matainence since it was abit overdue, all the basic stuff checking registry, cleaning temp files, chkdsk, virus & spyware checking. After doing that my registry problem went away. After a few days i eventually got round to turning off the auto-restart on BSOD, after a day or two i got 0x0000007E.

Has anybody had these problems, if so how did you resolve them.

PC:
M/B - http://www.uabit.com/index.php?optio...ge=1&model=136
CPU - Athlon 1.6 Ghz
RAM - 512 MB
HDD - 80 GB

Thanks in advance,
Chris1990.

BSODs are usually related to either 1 of two things:

1. Hardware problem
2. Drive issue

While BSODs can happen in other circumstances, those two are the highest causes so you may be experience an issue with hardware.

What exactly does the BSOD say? Also, try update all of your drivers.

As usual the BSOD say's nothing just gives error code, ive updated all my drivers, could it be that the new drivers are incompatabile.

Usually the BSOD says where it occured and/or a word or phrase that really helps with diagnosing.

ye i know sometimes it gives the file like vga.sys or something but it didn't, i'll wait to the next one.

Could be related to your video card then (drivers or otherwise).

Sorry, when i said vga.sys i didn't mean i had one syaing that, it was an example.

Im gonna look for new drivers, but im sure i installed the latest.

are you using XP? if you have 64 bit hardware you could try upgrading to XP 64 professional.

no, i have 32bit. I've just spent the last 1 1/2 cleaning inside the pc, its running at ~11C lower but the aux fan is making a lot of noise (very loud). Maybe the problem was overheating as i hadn't cleaned out the case for about 9mnth cos ive been busy, it was filthy (i have a big hairy dog), all nice and clean now tho :).

I've also installed the drivers that came with my m/b, the old ones, i havn't had any problems yet.

sounds like you installed the wrong sound driver when you updated the drivers. You had a service fail to start because of it, called "Windows Audio". It is used for everything except the operating system. So you would have sounds for folders, etc, but nothing else. It is easy to install the wrong driver for sound chipset. I've done it myself. And next thing you know, random bluescreens.