Window 7 Bad Driver BSOD, How Can I find out which driver it is?

Question

So I have probably looked at every resource I can on Google - I have spent the last 15 hours looking and testing.

I am experiencing a BSOD loop. After investigating further it would seem it is a Bad Driver issue - I just can't figure out what it is.

Things I have tried, and notes:

• I can not boot to Safe Mode
• The Recovery Console works
• I have a number of WinPE CDs and have been going between them
• I have run Chkdsk, sfc scannow etc.. (All the usual, this in not my first rodeo)
• I have toggled the IDE/AHCI modes in the BIOS - no change
• I cannot get it to log the boot sequence to ntbtlog.txt - it just doesn't write
• I cannot get it to do minidumps, even though I modified the registry to allow for this

Many, many resources point to a Hard Drive issue, either faulty drive or bad controller drivers. The drive is not faulty, if anything it is the controller drivers.

I just am unable to confirm, I have even force re-installed the standard drivers using DISM (Offline).

My main issue here is that I simply cannot see what driver the system is hanging on, this is all I need to resolve this issue.

If at all possible I do not want to have to re-install; it will take days.

So what do I need?

To enable boot logging, through the registry (Offline within PE)

OR

A PE compatible tool to tell me the load sequence of the drivers at boot.

OR

A command line sequence to do the same.

-

I have searched high and low and cannot find what I am looking for so hopefully SU can point me in the right direction.

I refuse to believe that my only solution is to give up and re-install as this is simply a driver issue - I just don't know which driver; If I could load Safe Mode it would be fixed within minutes.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Edit: I need to do this / this through the registry only, or do I use BCDedit?

Solution

I don't know if this is what you're asking for. If you're experiencing a BSOD, then the BSOD should contain the information what driver module caused the BSOD. If you can't capture the BSOD message, press F8 at boot time and select:

Comments

[Admin]

@trismark below is correct, in that you need to attempt to identify exactly what BSOD you are getting. More importantly, you believe it is a bad driver... however, when Windows loads into safe mode, it doesn't load hardware specific drivers. It loads generic Microsoft issued and approved drivers. For example, it doesn't use your specific video card drivers, it uses generic VGA drivers. Same for the drive controller. You may load a chipset specific one that you installed in normal mode, but in safe mode, a generic one from Microsoft loads.

[Admin]

Yep, the actual error should contain some useful information. Try posting a photo of it, if you can't make sense of it.

[Admin]

You should also rule out a hardware problem.

[Admin]

Unless you post the BSOD information we can't really help you determine what drive it is. Of course the fact you CANNOT boot into safe mode actually suggests its NOT a driver problem.

[Bigbio2002]

i believe 7B relates to the boot loader not being able to find files on your disk. Likely you had your BIOS set to AHCI but didn't have the AHCI driver installed. I've seen issues where the MS-provided driver causes issues, you need to use the official vendor driver.