This computer had some problems starting… blank screen and not much else.

A look inside the tower showed a video card with a burned out fan… Now thats an obvious place to start.

Once I replace the vid card, the PC now shows a bios message, XP starts its normal boot, and then I see a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death).

The message is stop 0x0000007B

A search around the net shows it can be caused by all sorts of stuff (virus, hardware failure, device driver problems).

In this case, the hard drive is the component to try.

I plug the drive into my workshop PC, run speedfan, and quickly see that the SMART settings indicate an imminant drive failure.

I quickly shutdown, restart using acronis, and clone the drive to a new drive.

Luckily, the clone is successful, and the customer computer is back up and runninng shortly after.