Scott Hanselman

FIXED: Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) 7E in HIDCLASS.SYS while installing Windows 7

June 08, 2014 Comment on this post [14] Posted in Bugs
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I was doing tech support for a friend this weekend. He was paving an old HP Envy laptop (although this happens on some Dell Inspirons as well) and was getting a blue screen in the middle of install. Then, of course, if you're not looking at it you'll just reboot and drop back into setup and get the "the computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error." At this point he was in a setup loop.

IMG_1519

"HIDCLASS.SYS" is the driver that failed. HID means Human Interface Device, and that means "keyboards or mice" for the most part.

IMG_1543

Errors in HIDCLASS.SYS, especially during setup, almost always means that there's trouble with an attached keyboard or attached mouse. I asked my buddy if he had a mouse attached and he did. He removed the mouse, and started setup over again. Setup succeeded. Then, he spent about an hour (and several reboots) getting Windows 7 "gold" (which was released in July of 2009, almost 5 years ago) up to date with patches, service pack 1, and the latest drivers. Then he was able to attach his mouse and it works fine.


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About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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June 08, 2014 17:51
Ha - Sometimes its the simple things!

Had the same thing but with a USB hard drive once.
June 08, 2014 20:44
Which once again demonstrates the need for periodic cumulative service packs, plural. Or at the very least, a post-SP1 CU.
June 09, 2014 9:47
Microsoft have declined a call for an updated VB6 programming language.

Microsoft's Paul Yuknewicz stated "VB6 was and still is without a doubt awesome. VB6 made developers incredibly productive building a breadth of applications and as a result we have a wealth of applications and passionate developers to this day in 2014. "

Yuknewicz stated that is "not possible" to add the same modifications to the VB6 programming language that they have already added to VBA.

They have also announced that it is "not feasible" to open source VB6.

Yuknewicz admitted VB6 will continue to be supported by Microsoft until at least 2024.
June 09, 2014 9:49
The call for an updated VB6 programming language, and Microsoft's refusal, is at:

http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/3440221-bring-back-classic-visual-basic-an-improved-versi
June 09, 2014 12:09
After a lot of misleading articles I found your site and now my issue is solved. Thanks for detail information.
June 09, 2014 12:15
Hmm!! Good one!!
Whats with this VB6 comments here???
June 09, 2014 15:58
Great article aimed at solving a specific problem (which I've had at least 4 times in the past). As for the VB6 programming troll.. lets just ignore it.
June 12, 2014 15:47
Thanks Scott. We had a 5yo Dell Precision stuck in the installation loop that you have described. Unplugged the mouse as suggested and it finally worked! Could have bought a new server with the amount of time we wasted.
June 27, 2014 2:56
Hello Scott,

I had the same kind of problem with hidclass.sys on my wife's Asus eeePC. But there were no external keyboard or mouse connected. I have turned off USB in BIOS setup and it worked. After successful installation I have turned on USB and everything works fine.
rkk
July 22, 2014 2:07
We stumbled over here from a different page and thought
I should check things out. I like what I see so now i'm following you.
Look forward to checking out your web page yet again.
July 25, 2014 18:53
My family members every time say that I am wasting my time here at net,
however I know I am getting experience everyday by reading thes good articles
or reviews.
August 19, 2014 7:55
Just an FYI to say thank you. The new HP ProLiant ML310e G8 v2 intelligent provisioning installation of Server 2008 has this very issue. As the operating system is installing/configuring on first boot, it throws the 7E stop error with an HIDClass.sys message.

I suspected the wireless mouse, so I reinstalled pulling the transceiver on boot to the initial extraction of Server 2008 files. Sure enough, install went smooth.

I found this article as I was waiting to see what happened with the installation.

Cheers.
August 25, 2014 22:25
Great post.
August 31, 2014 1:21
Oh, the irony... My Microsoft wireless mouse was causing this. I ran the setup several times, I used both DVD and USB until, finally, I caught the error code and arrived here. Thanks, you saved the day! :)

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.