Need Help: Builder's worst nightmare [Reward!]

I'm not sure if this is violating forum rules, but the first person whose solution to this problem works in full will get $10 from me via PayPal. I know your time is valuable and I want to show more appreciation that just the average newb having all of you solve his problems with no regard for the time you invest looking into these problems.

There is nothing worse than getting the parts to build your new PC, installing everything, and then running into problems during POST. I beg for anyone's help. First off I'll give you my specs:

New Stuff:
ASUS A8V-Deluxe Mobo (New item)
AMD Athalon 64 3000+ (New)
2X512 Mushkin DDR PC3200 running in Dual (New)

From old PC:
80 GB Seagate P-ATA Hard Drive (WINXP already installed - pulled from PC I was previously using Yesterday)
HP DVD Writer Drive
Acer CD-RW Drive
Generic Floppy

Various PCI stuff:
Nvidia Gefroce 200 64MB
D-Link Wireless
Santa Cruz sound card
ATI TV TUNER card


Now all the old stuff worked fine on my old P4 1.6 GHZ / 512MB RDRAM / ASUS P4TE Mono.

What happens is this:
The computer goes through post alright. At first it said "No drive attached to FastTrak controlled, No BIOS installed" and then I went to the BIOS and disabled my RAID/SATA controller.

As soon as the computer tries to boot Windows from the HD, I get a super fast blue screen and then my PC resets itself. When I try to boot in safe mode, it seems to load a certain number of files then it blue screens and does the same thing.

I'll try and give you some BIOS info so those questions are already answered when you try to help me: I have a BIOS version from JAN 2005 on the mobo. I disabled the FastTrak RAID controlled. THe mem is set in dual channel. In hardware monitor, the Power Fan has an RPM in red so I dunno what that means (around 800). All fans seem to be spinning fine to me, plus the side is off. The CPU temp is 80 degrees F.

One thing I noticed is that my secondary IDE settings in the bios arent registering my 5.25 drives. At first I had my HD on my Primary (I think its set as slave)IDE connector and my CD Drives on the Secondary Connectors set to master and slave. Everything gets power, but the CD drives do not show up in the BIOS. It just says its not detected. My hard drive DOES show up, however. When I put one of my drives (the DVD) on the Primary IDE chain with my HD, the BIOS detected it. I'm hoping that my secondary IDE thing isnt broken or something. But would that affect the computer's inability to boot windows?


If you guys need any other information, please let me know. I'm at work but I have a fairly good memory about what I've done/seen so don't hesitate to ask.

 

OK, it just occurred to me that I should try to use different ribbon cable for the secondary IDE thing...maybe its the cable.

Im also going to try using a 20GB Hard drive and Win XP cd for a fresh install.

 

First of all you have to reset the cmos by taking out the cmos battery with the power chord unplugged for about 2 to 3 minutes anytime you put a cpu into a motherboard!!

Second of all...you have to do a new or repair install of XP/2000 whenever you put a pre-existing hard drive with xp already installed into a new system!! Otherwise you will get ALL KINDS OF PROBLEMS!!

Have you done that yet??

Roger

 

I have not done either. I will do so tonight. Should I try repairing windows first? If I do a new install, does it wipe out my HD?

 

dude - winxp is installed based on your hardware, you can almost never plug out a HD and plug it in another machine and then expect XP to be running fine (unless it's exactly the same pc, but i never tried).

when you change pc, or upgrade major components on your mobo, then you need to re-install xp definately.

if you want to keep your files, either partition the drive or use another HD to install windows on, so you still access your old xp installation and grab your files (mydocuments, my favourites, etc..) and transfer to your new installation.

hope this helps.

 

So when you reinstall, it also formats your HD?

 

When you do a repair install....it goes over the existing windows installation and doesn't touch anything else!! you don't have to format to do a repair!! However...don't freak out, because a repair install looks and acts EXACTLY like it was a new install!! You have to go through the whole complete setup routine!!

When you do a new/clean install....you format the drive, which means that it is wiping the drive TOTALLY clean, everything, the whole enchilada, then it installs a new copy of XP onto the drive!!

Sometimes a repair works and sometimes it doesn't!! I personally prefer to just do a whole new clean install!! That way you are starting with a brand new squeeky clean system!!

Roger

 

Thanks! I'll try the repair install first. I'd do the new install, but I have a ton of stuff on that drive that I dont wanna lose.

 

I found recently, through experience, the following situation twice. Replace a motherboard that has a via chipset and an intel processor, to a new motherboard that has the via chipset and an amd processor. I didn't have any BSODs, windows booted fine. Note: I still did a repair install on both of these machines.

Was this a rarity? Probably so, but doing this twice in one week with no BSODs? Maybe I should have played the lottery those days. Oh well.


Is this drive partitioned by any chance?

 

Not partitioned...whats BSODs? (forgive the newbery)

 

BSOD = Blue screen of death, which is geek language for the windows stop errors, because when you get one the screen turns blue with a bunch of text...and that literally means that windows has been stopped because of an error that might cause damage!! It means it's the end of the road!! You'll know it if you ever get one!!!!

If your drive is partitioned, then you can install a new copy of XP onto an empty partition and use that to see all the stuff you have on the drive...that way you can backup any valuable files in "My Documents", etc. However you will still have to reinstall all of your applications, games, etc.!!

Roger

 

Thx, I know what blue screens of death are, since I referred to them in my first post in the thread. I just didnt know what the acronym was. Thanks.

When I get home from work, I'll try the repair install.

If that doesnt work, can I install XP on a small 20GB hard drive and then hook up my other drive as a slave to get the files from it? (even though it has XP too)...

 

A repair will basically install Windows over itself.

However, in your case, the hard drive will still contain old drivers and files from the previous machine, so you will be far better off formating and doing a fresh install on a clean hard drive.

A repair will work, but a format and install is a far better option.

 

Hey, wasn't XP supposed to have done away with the BSOD? In any case, if you want to save your files, take them, and save them all to that 20GB hard drive you mentioned, then wipe the 60GB. I keep a tiny 2GB on my computer for just such a purpose.

Personally, I'm still a 98 user, so I don't know much about XP. Hope this helps.

 

Yes you can do just like you said...Install the OS on the PRIMARY drive...whichever one of the two you choose...then hook the already pre-existing drive as the slave and you should be able to see all the files on the old drive by going into "My Computer" and clicking on the drive you want and then go whistling down the path of files until you get whatever you are looking for!! (Didn't know if you knew how to do that or not) Then you can paste and copy any file you want from the old drive to the new drive (like the stuff in "My Documents", etc.) but keep in mind...you will not be able to use any of the apps. or games, etc. in the old drive!! It is now strictly storage!!

Personally...what I would do (even though it is labor intensive)...Install the new XP on the 20gig drive...install a cd burning program along with it...then burn all valuable stuff onto cd...then format the old drive (since it is the bigger of the two) reinstall a new copy of windows onto the older bigger drive...reinstall all of your apps...restore your valuable info from the cd's you just made...then format the 20gig drive and keep it in there specifically for storage and/or backup purposes!!

That is just the way I would do it...it's your computer so you can fanagel it however you want!!

Hope I didn't confuse you!!

Roger

 

Well I installed XP on teh 20 and attached the 80GB as a slave. Windows picks it up just fine, but when I go to my computer and try to explore the drive i get thee prompt "The drive is not formatted, would you like to format it now?" and then if I click no, it jsut doesnt let me access the drive. Any ideas?

 

If windows is telling you that the drive is not formatted, that's bad. Download and burn Knoppix v3.8.2 'Live CD'. If the drive is readable it will read it. Then you can backup the critical data, then repartition and format the drive. It's a longshot, but just might work.

 

What could have happened? This drive was the only drive in my old computer 3 days ago..working just fine...

 

Either the MBR or the MFT have been corrupted. I suspect the MFT is corrupt. When windows says the drive is unformatted, that is not good. I would try the Knoppix CD and see if the drive is readable that way.

 

I would try the knoppix, if my CD drive worked. See here: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=62860

 

Thank you Quagmire02. I forgot to give the link to Knoppix in my earlier post.