new motherboard/cpu, but keeps rebooting before i can get to windows
 

Hey everyone, an update here of my PC woes from a few weeks ago.

I picked up a new motherboard and CPU, as well as PSU. I got them installed, the PC boots (sigh of relief) and i can get to the bios and whatnot.

However, once it starts loading windows (I have XP pro and 2003 server installed as a dual boot) it reboots. I can't get it to boot windows at all.

I'm going to be fiddling with it to see if I can get it working, but any help would be appreciated.

It's a SOLTEK 75FRN2-L board, and an AMD athlon XP 2500+ barton.

I'm using my Radeon 9000 pro video card as well.


Here's hoping I can get it working tonight. Thanks!

OK, clarify something... If it doesnt boot, how do you have windows installed? And dual booting at that?

/confused

I was wondering the same. I've never tried booting up Windows on a different motherboard than what it was installed. Somehow I don't think windows would like it too much.

Thats why I ask. If he is taking an old install and trying to just drop the HDD in the new system, it ain't gonna be pretty.

take out every unnecessary card (read: everything but video)

Take out every stick of ram but 1

try it. If it reboots, swap ram sticks. Keep trying for all your sticks. If it CONTINUES, borrow a vidcard and try that

if you havent reinstalled windows, and its not exactly the same motherboard as the old one, there is a very very small chance of it working.

you cant change stuff like that and just slap the old HDD in. it wont work. what windows does is interface between the hardware and software, ie major change to hardware, windows has no idea what to do.

I guess I was being a bit ignorant. It was an old install of windows. I didn't touch my harddisks when I changed the hardware around. I"m running knoppix from the very same machine right now, so I guess it is a windows problem.

Not too much of a problem for me to format, I just didn't realize that I would have to.

Thanks for the insight everyone.

Yeah. This issue is that the old install of windows has all the drivers for the old hardware installed, including all the stuff for the mobo. It wouldnt like it if you dropped it into a new machine.

Once, I actually replaced a motherboard with the same exact model, and Windows 2000 was slow and messed up, so I resorted to a reformat/reinstall

Here's a thought: When the OS starts, hold down the F8 key. THis brings up the startup menu. Start in safe mode. Then, go to the control panel -> system -> device manager, and hit F5. Let XP find the new hardware, and if necessary, install new drivers.

This isn't a "good thing" but it might work, it's worked on replacements for me before.

So basically the OP installed Windows on a machine, swapped the CPU, motherboard, and other components and now Windows won't boot.

Someone brought a system like this into the computer shop I work at. I believe it was fixed by starting Windows XP setup but doing a "repair installation" instead of a full reinstallation. You're probably going to have to reactivate Windows XP, which might not work if you've used your CD key too many times.

Yeah, the above post is correct, boot from the Windows Setup cd, and at the first menu hit enter for install/setup windows, it will then scan the drive to find any existing installs. After it finds your install choose 'r' for repair. This basically goes through the installation again without deleting anything but re-detects and installs drivers for your new motherboard. Any time you switch a motherboard on an XP install you have to do this, only time it has a half-way chance of working is if the new board has the same chipset or a chipset from the same company.

I had an issue once where I forgot to put thermal paste on my cpu. Kept rebooting my system. Rookie error on my part, but I found it.

Unless you're my brother-in-law who has all the damn luck.

Seriously, though, you should have already saved all your files from the hard drive to disk because you're going to have to reformat for the new system to boot. The hard drive doesn't want to boot because it still has all the info and formatting left over from the old mobo and it's, like, uh...confused and stuff?

Yep, backups are no problem. I'm covered.

I just formatted, instead of trying to fiddle with bootdisks.

I wasn't really in a crisis. I've been so annoyed by the timing and poor financial timing of all this computer trouble, that I just don't care anymore. I didn't touch the stuff until a few days after it arrived.

Its running now, so I can get back to writing those wonderfull essays that I love so much ;)


Seriously though, thanks for all the input in this thread and the original one a few weeks back. It's been much appreciated.

Makes you think though... this wouldn't have been a problem with Windows 95 or 98. Or even MSDOS. In the "old days" you COULD just slap an old hard drive to a new system and still be able to boot.

And in Hollywood movies, this would never be a problem either. Heck! You could chuck in a Mac floppy and it'll boot up fine in alien computer system!

Yep, and you'll be able to guess the password in two or three tries. Everytime :D

Yup. The culprit in this case is something Microsoft calls the Hardware Abstration Layer (HAL). In the old days (6 years ago) Windows would go out and probe your devices to see what you've got and run "directly ontop of" the hardware. From an application stand-point, each app directly access the harddrive, memory, or anything else. Then Windows introduced multi-tasking, and as you might remember, that's when things got messy. Applications that didn't play well together could hang your system, leading to a pretty unstable platform. With the introduction of the HAL, applications don't directly access anything anymore. They access virtual devices provided by Windows to keep things running more smoothly. Plus, applications don't need to know anything about your individual hardware. They can simply write to files and access memory the same way on all systems despite differences in the underlying hardware.

For whatever reason, reinstalling Windows, or backing up your configuration is the only *safe* way to swap motherboards. Had the same problem awhile back, and found some useful articles on Microsoft's website.