> > A friend's laptop was working fine. She left it at home and her daughter or
> > grandson installed something (such as a game or codec) on the machine.
> >
> > Now the machine won't even boot up. It boots for a while, a BSOD, then it
> > reboots. Doesn't matter if normal, safe mode, etc is used - the machine BSODs
> > and reboots. A cursory search with Google turns up that the problem probably
> is
> > a configuration/driver error.
> >
> > I took the hard drive out, put it in an external enclosure, and scanned the
> > drive. The drive physically seems fine.
> >
> > Is there a program I can run on the drive that will scan the drive and fix any
> > driver/configuration problems? The program would need to be able to look at
> the
> > external drive, not the current boot drive.
> >
> > Any help would be appreciated.
> What stop error is it? 0x0000007a? 0x0000007e?
>
> Did you try Last Known Good config? Try booting into safe mode (if you can) and
> select NO which will take you to system restore. Pick a time before the F-up
> occurred.
>

I don't have physical access to the computer at the moment so I can't answer the error code question. I tried last known good config, safe mode, safe mode with networking, safe mode with command prompt. A system restore was never performed so there is none to go back to.