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From: SteveH on 3 Jan 2010 09:30
Dave C. wrote:
> On Sun, 03 Jan 2010 10:00:34 GMT
> "SteveH" <steve.houghREMOVE(a)THISblueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> DaBigBuddha wrote:
>>> Thank you, Davy, but yes. The problem is, that it won't boot into
>>> any form of windows at all, no matter which prompt I select at that
>>> screen. I have tried them all. Start windows normally, start in
>>> safe mode, safe mode with prompt, all of them.
>>> To me, this is a strange situation, because everything is pretty
>>> much right out of the box. I inserted the hard drive into another
>>> machine, and that machine recognized the hard drive just fine. I
>>> was able to browse the files and open things from it. So, I don't
>>> think it's the hard drive. I thought that might be the case at
>>> first, but I didn't think a bad hard drive would cause and endless
>>> reboot sequence. I am wondering if there is anything else I can
>>> do. I have heard tales of "flashing the bios" or something like
>>> that and "resetting the cmos" but I don't know if those would work
>>> in this situation. Any more ideas?
>>
>> So the HDD already had Windows installed on it? (if not, ignore the
>> rest of this)
>>
>> If so, there's no guarantee (unless it's just the same board being
>> replaced) that it will work, Windows may not have the correct drivers
>> etc, for this board and just not play. And the fact that the HDD
>> works on another board proves nothing, you may just have ben luckier
>> with that board, or presumably you wasn't booting from it, just
>> looking at it, in which case of course it should work.
>>
>> I reckon you need to boot from a Windows CD and do a repair install,
>> if not, do the sensible thing and do a clean install.
>>
>> --
>> SteveH
>
> I'm betting you nailed it, steveh. The giveaway is the 80GB disk
> size. Can you even buy a drive that small anymore? If so, why would
> you? It would probably be more expensive than a disk several times
> that size. -Dave

Indeed, I've got a few spare drives knocking about, the /smallest/ of which
is an old 250Gb. I've got a 750 and 500 in the PC and a 1Tb in an external
box. Found a good way of easily using the spares actually - I bought an
Antec EasySATA drive caddy which lets me hot swap SATA drives at will (AHCI
enabled in XP) - dead useful, and cheap as well.

--
SteveH


From: DaBigBuddha on 3 Jan 2010 16:35

Actually, Steve, Thank you for putting that idea into my head. I hadn't
thought of a driver problem. I assumed that a bootable HDD would
instantly be recognized from a new mobo, but apparently, I am mistaken.
I'm not afraid to admit that, if it gets me what I need. hehe. So,
thanks again. The bigger problem is that both the DVD drive and the HDD
are IDE interfaces and the new board only has one IDE interface
connection. So, I will have to go out and get an IDE SATA converter,
then I will try this solution.
Quick follow-up question though: Do you think that by inserting the
mobo disk in the DVD drive and booting will solve this driver problem,
if in fact that is what the problem is? Just wondering if I can do
that, or if I have to boot from the Windows CD. Thanks again.


From: SteveH on 3 Jan 2010 18:53
DaBigBuddha wrote:
> Actually, Steve, Thank you for putting that idea into my head. I
> hadn't thought of a driver problem. I assumed that a bootable HDD
> would instantly be recognized from a new mobo, but apparently, I am
> mistaken. I'm not afraid to admit that, if it gets me what I need.
> hehe. So, thanks again. The bigger problem is that both the DVD
> drive and the HDD are IDE interfaces and the new board only has one
> IDE interface connection. So, I will have to go out and get an IDE
> SATA converter, then I will try this solution.

The one IDE connector should support two devices, you just need an IDE cable
with three connectors on. Then just change the jumpers on the drives - the
device on the end to be set to master and the second device set to slave, or
just set both devicesto 'cable select (cs)'.

> Quick follow-up question though: Do you think that by inserting the
> mobo disk in the DVD drive and booting will solve this driver problem,
> if in fact that is what the problem is? Just wondering if I can do
> that, or if I have to boot from the Windows CD. Thanks again.

The mobo disk probably isn't even bootable, and you couldn't easliy fix the
problem that way anyway, if at all. You would need to set the BIOS to boot
from CD/DVD and insert a XP disk (I'm assuming you're using XP) and then
follow these instructions:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm#RI

HTH
--
SteveH


From: Bug Dout on 4 Jan 2010 01:12
Have you tried running one of the Memtests on this new build? Might be a
good idea before fiddling more with the HD and the Windows install. Put
one of the memtests (either 86 or +) on a CD and boot from the CD. Then
you can eliminate the memory as the problem...or find it there.
--
Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are
governed by the few.
~ David Hume
From: Jan Alter on 4 Jan 2010 18:56



"Bug Dout" <buggsy2(a)mailinator.com> wrote in message
news:87bphatn48.fsf(a)mailinator.com...
> Have you tried running one of the Memtests on this new build? Might be a
> good idea before fiddling more with the HD and the Windows install. Put
> one of the memtests (either 86 or +) on a CD and boot from the CD. Then
> you can eliminate the memory as the problem...or find it there.
> --
> Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are
> governed by the few.
> ~ David Hume

It sounds more like a memory problem with it crashing and falling back to
the bios screen. From your specs I can't tell if it's one stick of memory or
two. If it's one stick try another memory chip, if two then remove one stick
and try starting with the other. Try memtest if you get pleasure out of any
of these procedures for confirmation.

--
Jan Alter
bearpuf(a)verizon.net


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