xp crashes when moved to new computer

i used to have a pentium 4 machine and my friend wasnt using his Athlon so he is letting me borrow it. I took out my hdd and threw it in his machine and it crashes on boot. when booting from safe mode it gets to agp.dll and then restarts. the gfx card in my machine was an agp nvidia geforce 5950, his has a geforece 7800 and fits a pci slot i assume, but i had to remove that because it only has a dvi port and my monitor only takes vga, so currently im using the onboard vga graphics. now if you didnt follow all that ill make a little diagram.

computer 1
pentium 4
agp video card
windows xp

computer 2
athlon
pci video card
windows vista

i move the hdd from computer 1 to computer 2, and removed the video card from computer 2 and used onboard graphics, and xp crashes on boot when loading "agp.dll"

any help with that limited amount of info?
reinstalling windows on the xp drive is out of the question, because all of the installed programs on it are the only reason i want it to work in this machine. i assume theres some kind of missing driver that it needs on this machine that it didnt on mine (computer 1) and it seems to me that it should be easy to just add that driver. however, i ordered a converter for dvi to vga and am also wonder if when it gets here in about 5 days if xp will boot with the pci video card? and finally, as if im not already asking a lot, will installing a driver so it runs on this machine make it unable to run on computer 1? because i wont have this thing forever, my friend will want it back at some point, so it will need to retain backwards compatibility.

 

If you mean you have simply switched the HDD from one motherboard to another , unless they are the same board then I'm afraid it's unlikely it will ever work.

When you use a different motherboard you must almost always freshly install windows.
Different motherboard = different drivers, chipsets etc.

Sorry.

 

i cant simply replace the drivers and stuff?

 

Well you installed XP on an Intel board, it has a certain type of chipset and drivers that were configured with the install.
Moving it to a different rig will result in nothing being configured for that rig.

I have had it work once in dozens of attemps when building new machines for people.
I've had it boot as far as desktop but no further.
And I've had it fail the rest of the time.

Do you mind if I ask why you switched?
Is your rig broken?

 

my rig is just shitty, my friend is letting me use his.
i have a pentium 4 he has an athlon dual core 2.11 ghz

 

is there any way that i could install a second copy of windows on the same hard drive i was using before, i have enough unpartitioned space for it, and then copy over certain files to the old windows install?

 

Yes if you have a partition set on it (split the drive up)

There are reported ways of doing it but I've always found it much easier to reinstall.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;824125

For Example, but it seems like a lot of work for a temp move just because your rig is slower. Then you have to do it again when you put it back.

May I ask what CPU/Ram are in each machine?
I know you said P4 and Athlon but what GHZ is the P$ and what athlon is it?

Only reason I ask is I wonder how much more power your friends has or if yours is just bogged down.

Edit: Do you have a spare HDD you cold use temporarily?

 

well i want to use my hdd on this rig because of all the programs i have installed on it, thats why i dont want to reinstall. my p4 has 1.75gigs of ram and is rated at 3.0ghz with hyperthreading, the athlon is an Athlon Dual core 4050e 2.11ghz with 2 gigs of ram.

i transcode video from avi to mpeg 2 for dvd burning all the time, and i average a conversion rate of about 22 fps on my machine, im transcoding on this one right now at 53 fps.

 

also, on my hdd i have xp installed onto a 5 gig partition, which holds nothing but the operating system and drivers for hardware on my mobo. all my programs and everything else i have installed on different partitions. is it possible to install windows on some unpartitioned space, and then copy every registry entry over from the first install and have it run the programs located on a separate partition from either operating system?

 

i read the article you linked me to, but when i hit r to repair it takes me to a command prompt, it doesnt do an automated process.

 

Oh you have a partition with ONLY XP on it?

Then fresh install on that partition, your other files and progs should work fine and all your data will be safe.
You do have to be very very careful that you choose the correct patition to install on obviously.
You will need an XP disc and preferably a driver disc for his machine. Otherwise you want to find the drivers first and put them on a flash drive or disc.
You also need some knowledge of installing Windows.

You will of course have to do this again when you switch back.
It is possible that some of your progs may need reinstalling but I've done this many times without issues except a couple of times I had progs that simply didn't like the transfer and I just had to repair or reinstall them.

 

if i reinstall ontop of the xp installation, wont it get rid of all of the registry entries that store settings and shortcut locations and so on?

 

You'd think so wouldn't you lol
I lucked out the first time, I wasn't expecting it to work but it did.
Hell I even just installed Win7 from XP on a partition and 60% of what I had installed worked right off the bat.
Xp to Xp , like I said, rarely had problems.

Things like Shortcuts will have to be copied to desktop etc from install folders.

If litterally ALL you have on your C drive is XP and nothing in programme files other than windows stuff then it's fairly easy.
You will want to save your browser favorites and anything in docs.

You will lose everything on the partition and end up with a fresh install of XP.

I have to add, I don't garentee this success, I'm just telling you what I have done and the success rate I've had. It does depend on the software, like I said, some works, some doesn't.

As for GFX card, thats an easy one really and yes it will boot just fine with it plugged in and you can uninstall the old drivers and install your gfx drivers.

You have a fair amount of work to do this, your machine is certainly less powerful by quite a bit. I would consider upgrading your own PC, I realize funds don't always alow this but it would be much better to upgrade your PC and have it all setup and finished rather than throwing stuff back and forth.
When you go back to your PC, you have to do it all again. that would suck lol

 

what would happen if i installed a second copy of windows in the unpartitioned space, so i could have an install for this mobo, and one for my old one?

 

lol How many partitions do you have?

You can duel boot, I've never actually done it myself but many people do. So my info would have to stop here because I don't want to advise you on something I've little experience in.
I'm confident to do it myself but I would research it a little first, but I wouldn't want to simply give you random answers from google, you can do that yourself and then I don't get blamed lol
As far as I know it's not that hard to do but without looking I'm not 100% sure how exactly it works.

 

if i were to dual boot and copy the registry from the first install to the second everything should work fine right? and do you know of a utility to let me copy the registry without being able to actually boot to that install?

 

I'm pretty sure a duel boot works the same as a fresh install in that respect.
As far as your PC knows you have 2 HDD's, you will have Windows XP on 1 hard drive and your software and files on another. Reguardless of which Operating system you boot.
I could be wrong, I have been known to be lol but this copying Reg and pasting is something I've never had to do. Sure I've moved, edited and replaced reg files but never for the reasons you are thinking.

 

alright, well thanks for all the help, im going to try and dual boot now, so ill be gone for the next 12 hours with how long xp takes to install.

 

lol Ok.
Please remember I said I'm not sure about duel booting.
And 12 hours? lol not on an X2, 1-1.5 hours max.

Good luck

 

well i seem to have messed everything up, though im not sure how.

i put in the xp install cd, and it shows the 2 hard drives inside correctly.
1 hard drive having 4 partitions and 1 unpartitioned space
1 hard drive with 1 partition

so i selected the unpartioned space, which is about 60 gigs, and i hit enter.
it brought me to a screen asking how i wanted to format it, and i didnt want all 60 gigs to be used, so i hit escape to go back thinking i had missed the prompt to select the size.
when it showed the previous screen, everything was messed up. instead of showing the 4 partitions on my hdd and some unallocated space, it now showed all of those partitions as 1 block of unpartioned space and 60 gigs formatted as RAW and 9mb of unallocated space.

at this point i was very worried that everything had just been messed up, so i exited entirely, and booted to the second hard drive, and opened disk manager, and it showed the first hdd as having 60 gigs of paritioned space as "healthy:active" and the other 400 or so gigs as unallocated space.

i didnt really know what to do, or what went wrong, as i didnt do anything on the windows setup disc, i only selected the space, and when given the choice of quick or full formatting i hit escape to go back to the previous screen.

so i went ahead and installed windows onto the 60 gig partition because i figured that the unallocated space couldnt be messed up by anything and had somehow lost the information detailing how it was formatted.

it finished installation, and then booted to it, so i checked device manager for everythign i would need to have drivers for and wrote it all down, then looked at disk manager again and it still showed all my previous data as unpartitioned.

so then i turned off the computer and went into the bios and selected the second hard drive as the primary hdd. im positive that this is the one i selected as they are both 500 gig seagates and i know mine has always started with 3m and his starts with 4m, which i found funny.

i save the changes and exit, and then it boots into...windows xp

at this point im horrified that i may have installed xp onto his hard drive and not mine, but im positive that i didnt, plus theres no way it could have formatted 500 gigs in that amount of time.

so i open the computer and unplug the power to my hard drive, and then boot.

and it fails, it says that do to some hardware thing it couldnt starts windows.

so i unplug both cord to my hdd and reboot. and it gives me an error about selecting the proper boot deivce.

i check the bios, and it has changed the harddrive from his to a usb device, so i just switch it back and reboot, and now i get the same error about selecting the proper boot device.

i double check the bios and it is correctly pointing to that hard drive, and i restart. now it says windows cant boot because the file hal.dll has been corrupted.

i unplug his drive and plug in mine, and boot, and it just gives me the same message about selecting a proper boot device.

i dont know what the hell happened.

i successfully installed windows, i was using it. it worked.

now both hdds wont boot, and i dont know what to do, i would love some help on this one.

 

UPDATE
i found a recovery program to restore the deleted partitions.
i wasnt quite sure what i was doing but it found the partitions that were deleted, so i selected one of them, one that didnt have the operating system, and restored it, but what i actually did was write it to the drive as being the only partition on the drive, so the disk couldnt boot.

so i booted with bartPE and tried to write all partitions to the drive, but for some reason it was a "BAD" configuration to have all partitions recognized. I couldnt set both partitions with windows on them as boot partitions, and i had to leave 1 partition as "deleted"

so i set the new windows install as the boot partition and the others as primaries. then i rebooted.

to my surprise it would not boot, saying that the hal.dll file had been corrupted.

i switch the boot partitions, marking the new one as deleted and the old one as the boot partition to see if it would at least try to boot and crash as expected. i restart and it works like i thought, boots and crashes. so all ive lost, for whatever reason, is a fresh install of windows, so no biggie.

i pop in the windows install cd and this time i create a new partition in the unallocated space of the old windows install (60gigs or so) of just 5 gigs, which was what i meant to do the first time. it creates the partition and brings me back to the partition selection screen to pick one to install windows to, and it did the same thing, it marked all of my partitions as unallocated space, and made its new partition, but this time, since the new partition wasnt the same size as the unallocated space, it has a second entry of unallocated space for the remaining 55 gigs.

now here is my plan.

im going to use bartPE to restore the disk to what it was before the windows install tried to delete the partitions, then im going to use ghost, which i put on bartPE to copy my original xp install from my hdd to the other one, and then i will install windows ontop of that, like you said i should do to my hdd, and i think that everything will work out fine right? at least i wont be messing up my hdd with any of it, and my friend say i can wipe his, he doesnt care.

so.. input?

 

Ok, well at this point if you have a physical second HDD, I would use that, format it, create a 10 or 20GB partition and install a clean XP on that partition.
Then hook your drive up as a slave and back up all of your data.
Once you have installed windows you will be able to access the rest of the drive to back up your data from your drive.

 

On reading your posts again, you also want to check the jumper settings on the drives.
I get the impression they are both selected as primary.
You need 1 as slave, there should be a diagram on top of the drive itself to show you where to set the jumper.
Note: Always power off when plugging in or unplugging ANYTHING.

 

I'm not sure by what you mean here but if Bart's can restore the disk then you're clear to back up to your friends disk. I don't believe that you can just copy the registry to reinstall your apps on a new machine, you will have to go through that again, no way out. Be glad that you may be able to restore your data.

BTW, 5GB for XP is really small (been there, done that) and you're killing any flexibility as you may need to install something on C drive and then run out of room, esp. for games and Windows apps. which probably won't let you install anywhere else.

Bottom line, do your backup, reinstall XP on the X2 on at least 10GB space, repartitioning as you like, reinstall apps and tweak, then Ghost it at that point! Trying to get this going any other way will give you headaches later on. A fresh start is best.

Yes, the X2 is way better at video conversion as it will run quicker and not make your single respond like molasses. when I upgraded to a dual core it was like night and day!

 

Just jumping in here a little late, but it sounds like you have an incompatible HAL (harware abstraction layer) loading on boot. Unlike Vista, XP only installs one layer, which is why it makes multiple HAL Ghost imaging difficult.

If you can do a repair install from the CD then that should fix the problem with booting. Otherwise, there is a long complicated process for replacing your HAL layer by hand, which includes booting from a PE bootdisk and checking the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\ACPI_HAL\0000\HardwareID or HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\PCI_HAL\0000\HardwareID registry keys for your HAL layer, then extracting the correct hal layer and kernel from the XP install disk to the hard drive. You can search google for these keys and you'll find more information, albeit scattered here and there.

That will get you into safe mode, where you can remove your chipset drivers through the Hardware Manager and manually deleting some .inf files.

You can then get a copy of sysprep or a third party program like magical jelly bean or something that lets you change your COA product key in XP so it will run on the new hardware.

I've had to do it before when imaging hard drives from system to system, but it's alot of work. The repair install is easier.

 

Its what i had set up before, i install all programs onto a separate partition aptly named "Programs" and they have all run fine, including office and several games. The only time its a problem is when the install wizard doesnt allow me to select a directory, but most programs that do that arent ones ill need for very long, or can easily just get again.

 

Ive only had to mess with jumpers on IDE drives and these are both sata. Ive simply been selecting the one i want to boot in the BIOS as the primary drive. Seems to be working fine. Im running off a fresh windows install on the second hard drive, 5 gigs, and i can access all the partitions on my first hard drive, including my windows partition and programs, a lot of the programs work fine without the registry entires, but a few, like mozilla apps, run like theyre running for the first time. Do you know any way that i can get the registry entries off of a partition i cant boot to?

 

When i boot to the install disk, my only repair option is to run the recovery console. And i have no idea what to type into that to make it run on a different machine.

 

Well I'm glad you got it working.
Didn't realize you had SATA drives so ok on the jumper thing.
As for moz, I have had that prob with moz and I just went through the motions, reintsalled it, only takes 10 minutes or so.
I try not to mess with the reg if I can help it. You can end up in a real mess if you do the wrong thing.

What exactly are you trying to get to work? and whats not working?

 

its not that the things dont work, its that they dont have the configured settings. thunderbird and firefox both run, but without any of my saved settings, which in thunderbird is all my email and account info, and for firefox my bookmarks and extensions, a very excessive list of extensions at that. Trillian doesnt remember all of my configured screen names and automated tasks. basically just a bunch of crap i dont want to have to redo, ive successfully moved the stuff before, as a few months back i have some bad secotrs on my drive which compromised the system integrity, and i had to move all my data, and i just copied all the registry keys onto a storage drive. i could easily put the hard drive back in my old computer, and copy the registry to my flash drive, but id much rather deal with programs than case screws, so im saving myself the tedious labor that i hate performing for some more mindful, allbeit longer, labor.

 

also i forgot to mention that i disabled hibernation and moved the page file to a seperate partition. which makes 5 gigs way more than enough.

 

ive been looking around the web, and im wondering if the file called "REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE" located in "E:\System Volume Information\_restore{88877061-A1D1-4D06-9391-999DD2D8454D}\RP64\snapshot"
(E:/ being my old windows install) could be added to the registry to add all the program entries from my previous install to fix the programs that arent working right in this install?

i can load it into the registry but i have to give it a name, and if i were to name it what it should be named then im worried it would assimilate into the current registry and when i try to unload it that it would mess things up. and i cant export the whole thing because it would have that name i have to assign it in the key and then would be added to the wrong place when i add it.

a little help please?

 

i feel like im talking to myself here lol

i had an idea, i could use notepad to replace whatever i call the hive when i load it with the correct name of "SOFTWARE" and just use something that i know wont be in the registry anywhere else like "random999" and that should give me a .reg file of every HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE key from my previous windows install that i could then add to the registry.
my questions are, what could go wrong?
it only adds things, it wont delete anything unless its replacing it right?
are there certain keys i should remove?

 

Ok well I would suggest reconfiguring them normally, books marks can be imported.
I wouldn't advise you start copying and pasting the Registry.

Do it the long way, could save you some major headaches.

 

i copied the registry keys from my bethesda games into the current registry successfully, and i think i will just copy them one program at a time as problems arise.

thanks for all the help, i think i can take it from here.

 

Thanks for letting us know, I hope the copying doesn't take too long and you find all the keys needed. Good luck.