Installed new motherbaord but windows wont start

[Roboxrr4]

Ok as i suspected in my previous post, it was my motherboard which was at fault.

I got a new one and installed it. That was the easy part.

Now when i start the computer it does boot up and post but when it get to the windows start screen and blue screen quickly appears and the computer restarts it self.

I have tried to repair the installation using my windows vista cd but i still get the same problem.

Any advice what to do next?


Thanks in advance.

[Agent]

If you didn't have ACHI set to 'on/enabled' in your old BIOS, make sure it's disabled in your new one. This is often a problem when moving boards.

[Roboxrr4]

the motherboards bios doesn't seem to have that option.

The board in question is a Asrock N68-GS UCC

[Agent]

What was the board previously? Have you changed chipsets?

[Roboxrr4]

The previous board was an abit ax78 and yeh the chipset has changed i think.

The abit had a amd770 and this one has an nvidia nforce 630a chipset.

[Agent]

The only real option you have is to try the restore utility on the Windows disk, which you've already tried.

Getting it to boot going from a AMD to a nforce chipset is....unlikely.

Sometimes if you uninstall as much as you can of the previous stuff and swap, you can get lucky. If you've not uninstalled any of the old stuff though, it's unlikely.

You normally don't have an issue going from the same brand of chipset to another (Intel > Intel for example, even on differing model numbers), but it's never certain.

[Roboxrr4]

oh christ if i knew this i would have bought one with an amd chipset.

So bascially i am out of luck?

I really have some important suff on the harddrive us well.

What do you recommend?

Should i buy a new harddrive and install a new os on there and try and get the files of my old one?

[Agent]

The data is 'safe' as long as you don't format the drive. You simply need some way to copy it off first. If you have a spare disk (or buy one), then yes, simply installing the OS on that and then plugging your old one in will allow you to access your data with ease.

You can install Windows on top of the current install in an attempt to get it to work, but this is never recommended. When I've had to do it in the past I've not lost data by doing it, but it is entirely unsupported by Microsoft and data loss is a possibility.

If you want to keep your data for certain, install windows on another drive (or plug it into another machine and copy it off first before installing it on your current drive).

[blueball]

If you do decide to install to another drive then remove the original drive for the installation so you don't overwrite it by mistake!

[GoNz0]

or you could just install new windows to the drive without formatting.

[Behemoth]

Why not download a Linux Live distro of some flavour, run that boot up on that and transfer all your data you need to backup onto a USB memory stick ?