So, power getting a bios up all ok, but cant get windows to load :(

[themaidenmaniac]

Hi guys, in a last ditch effort, ive managed to get a new psu at 400w, connected all the board up, and get to the bios.

But, all i get after that is a black screen and says "windows detected a hard ware change etc." select from safe mode, normal boot, boot from the last known good boot" and whatever i select, i get a little blue screen of death flicker for a milli-second and it goes round the loop again! Some people are telling me i cant just expect my hard disk with windows xp on it to just boot up and run-and tell me i need a re format. All the people i know tho, have put there board in and carried on as usual.

This is my last chance i guess, before i either go to a computer shop and ask for help and part with cash i dont have, or just send the board back and revert to my old crappy set up.

If anyone can shed any light on this, i owe you about 10 cyber pints. Otherwise, its time to get the sledge hammer out.

Cheers,

Kev

[BUFF]

! Some people are telling me i cant just expect my hard disk with windows xp on it to just boot up and run-and tell me i need a re format. All the people i know tho, have put there board in and carried on as usual.

Depends how radical a change.
If for example you move nForce chipset to nForce you may get away with it but e.g. Intel chipset to VIA you are unlikely to.

[Thorsson]

Mine wanted reactivation for replacing a faulty mobo, simply because it's one revision later. When I went from Barton to A-64 I had to reinstall. You might get away with a repair, but my experience is that even if it boots up you'll find you get odd little SNAFUs.

[killie99]

boot from the XP cd (assuming you have one) and take the 2nd repair option, not the first one. This may get you back up and running but as others have suggested a brand new install may be the order of the day. Personally after installing a new mobo I'd always do a fresh install of XP as the chances are somea application will come back and bite yer bum in a few weeks time.
What you're doing is simlilar to buying a vauxhall engine and trying to get it to run with a ford engine management system......

[themaidenmaniac]

Guys, thanks for the advice as always

Im putting it down to the graphics card at the moment, as i was trying to use a old riva tnt straight out in the new board hoping it would recognise.

Now, having resetup the old system, xp wont load on that either (it had integrated graphics before so never used the card & the new mobo obviously doesnt have on board gfx which is why im trying to use it)! So, somehow i think i need a xp driver for this old card, and im gonna make it work on the old system before trying with the new motherboard. However, i dont rate my chances and may need to get some cheap newer pci/express gfx card that i can easily get a xp driver for.

If this plan doesnt work, its back to the drawing board...

[TheAnimus]

can't you just assemble the old computer, resise the partitions, copy the data you want to the "data" partition. Then wipe the windows one and reload?

Chaning chipset is very complicated and whilst windows can coupe (haha activation can't, so stupid) your going to end up with a bloated system (as it dosen't know if it can unload all the old drivers properly).

That would be the best way.

[Madafwo]

Had a similar sort of error when I was fixing someones PC a while back, I found the only option was to do a complete reinstall, if you can put the drive affected in another machine and get your data off it thats the best thing to do. But apart from that things look pretty grim. Even trying a Repair install didn't work for me, you may have better luck though.