AHH, need help

[Zaknafindel]

I'm in the process of upgrading my mother's computer, and have decided (with the help of lovely people from the HH boards ) that a good way to do it would be to give her my current core items and upgrade my stuff. I love this idea!

ok, so last night I took all of my drives and my ram out of my system and replaced them with the parts that my mother had in her system. my motherboard, cpu, and power supply all stayed in the system that I plan on giving her. I get everthing set up and such, or so I think, and I try turning it on. Bios runs and memory tests work, but after that I get the "Sorry for the inconvienence, but windows could not start properly." It tells me that this could be do to new hardware or software (which makes total sense), and then asks me to choose one of several options: Boot in Safe Mode, Boot to Dos, Boot using network ??? (this one I didn't try cause I didn't think it could possibly be the problem), Use last known good settings, or start windows normally. I've tried all but the option convering networking. none of them get me into windows. as soon as I choose one, the screen goes black for a couple seconds, then it flashes what looks like a blue screen of death (but it's so fast you can't read it), then my computer restarts.

so I guess my question is: when changing a cpu and motherboard, is there anything I need to install or run so that my hard drive has the necessary info to use the new hardware? do I need a boot disc of sorts to make it work this first time?

and that's just half the problem.

I bought a new motherboard and case for myself, and have installed everything. cpu is an amd mobile 2500+. Motherboard is a DFI Infinity. ram is ocz el dual 256

when I start this baby up....I get nothing. my fans turn on, and lights on the motherboard turn on, but I get no sounds at all. so did I install the cpu wrong? I just don't get it.


so basically I'm looking for any thoughts you guys might have. please dont' assume anything, ask anything that comes to mind. I've only ever built one other computer, and that was awhile ago, so I realy have very little idea what I'm doing

 

[amdskip]

You can not swap hard drives between motherboards. Sometimes you get lucky and it will work and sometimes you can just delete all the system devices in the control panel before swapping, but trust me, it's not worth it. Backup the important data and put a fresh install of windows on her machine.

List ths system specs of your new system (don't forget the power supply brand/model). I would guess it is power supply related or some shorting going on. I would try booting the motherboard outside of the case.

 

[Zaknafindel]

about my mothers machine...yeah, I've been getting that i should do a fresh install from some other people too. If I put both her current HDD, as well as a brand new HDD in her machine, and then installed windows to the new one and made it the boot drive, that should get windows running while keeping my mother's files intact, right? I know her programs will need reinstalling, but saved files for those programs will still remain?


As far as MY new comp goes, I have the following parts:

DFI Infinity Motherboard
AMD Mobile 2500+ cpu
2 OCZ 256 el pc3500 ram sticks

my power supply came with my case that I just got,; didn't really think about it until a few mintues ago while chatting to a friend. It's a 350 watt, the case can be found @ http://www.newegg.com/app/view...=11-124-071&DEPA=0

ummm, not sure what else you might need. I'm starting to think it might not have enough power
I've got 2 HDD's in there, a Seagate 80gb and a western digital 40 gb. I've also got 2 cd drives, 1 is a straight forward cd rom, the other a 32x cd-rw. I've got a vantek aeroflow heatsink and two other fans working in the case. Gotta be the power supply right?? Any suggestions on a new one? (keep in mine I'd like to try my hand at overclocking my chip )

 

[mechBgon]

Too bad that Enermax case comes with an L&C power supply A real Enermax PSU, or an Antec or Fortron, would be some good-quality ones to look at. 400W+ might be advisable if you plan to OC and maybe put in a high-end video card as well as lots of drives.

I suggest you go down my list of no-POST/no-run stuffs here as well. As you can see, top of the list is scummy-quality power supplies, but there are some others too, like forgetting to plug in your ATX12V cable.

 

[Zaknafindel]

sweet list of possible problems mechBgon, thanks for the link. I really hope it's just that I need a bigger better PSU as opposed to me having shorted something. Also, about putting a high end vid card in: I have a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 128 mb in there right now, not super high end, but suitable for my needs. Totally forgot to mention that in my list of parts. I'm guessing it draws a bit of power :

thanks for your post

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Zaknafindel
I'm in the process of upgrading my mother's computer, and have decided (with the help of lovely people from the HH boards ) that a good way to do it would be to give her my current core items and upgrade my stuff. I love this idea!

ok, so last night I took all of my drives and my ram out of my system and replaced them with the parts that my mother had in her system. my motherboard, cpu, and power supply all stayed in the system that I plan on giving her. I get everthing set up and such, or so I think, and I try turning it on. Bios runs and memory tests work, but after that I get the "Sorry for the inconvienence, but windows could not start properly." It tells me that this could be do to new hardware or software (which makes total sense), and then asks me to choose one of several options: Boot in Safe Mode, Boot to Dos, Boot using network ??? (this one I didn't try cause I didn't think it could possibly be the problem), Use last known good settings, or start windows normally. I've tried all but the option convering networking. none of them get me into windows. as soon as I choose one, the screen goes black for a couple seconds, then it flashes what looks like a blue screen of death (but it's so fast you can't read it), then my computer restarts.

so I guess my question is: when changing a cpu and motherboard, is there anything I need to install or run so that my hard drive has the necessary info to use the new hardware? do I need a boot disc of sorts to make it work this first time?

Sure. While the HDD is in the old machine, install IDE drivers for the new hardware. Assuming both motherboards are ACPI compliant & use the same HAL, that one IDE driver addition is all you need to do.

 

[amdskip]

dclive, sure that may work but the system is for his mother and he idealy needs a trouble free system so he doesn't have to fix it as much, not doing a fresh install is just being lazy and it is not worth it.

 

[Zaknafindel]

hehe, lost me a bit... how would I go about installing IDE drivers for the new parts the HDD is interacting with?

I've been trying to look at this from the point of view of a computer repair person that I'd go to to have new parts installed in a system. what would they do to replace parts and have the machine up and running like new without the user needing to reinstall apps and windows and the like? I just talked to my mother and told her she might need to reinstall stuff and she said she really didn't want to go through all that and that she was gonna call a local computer shop and see what they say about it. It got me to thinking that there must be some other way...that computer shop's must have a way to receive a computer, swap new parts in, and return the computer to the user in a working fashion with all their programs and stuff right where they left it. How would I go about doing that?

 

[amdskip]

Trust me, it is not worth and others will back me up.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: amdskip
dclive, sure that may work but the system is for his mother and he idealy needs a trouble free system so he doesn't have to fix it as much, not doing a fresh install is just being lazy and it is not worth it.

That gives a trouble-free system - unless he had some other problem. I know why he's getting that error - it's one *specific* problem, and doing the step I posted will resolve it. Is there another problem?

Lazy is reformatting when you don't need to do so. It's also silly when a simple fix resolves the issue.

To do so, just find the motherboard drivers for the IDE controller in question, and install them. Run the setup utility, and let it do its' thing. Some won't install this way, and so *then* you'd have a problem. You could simply stick in a PCI IDE adapter, then install drivers for that (in your old system), then carry the PCI IDE card/adapter to your new system *and attach the HDD to the PCI IDE adapter*, and then boot the system, and then install the new motherboard's IDE drivers, and then you'd be able to boot with the HDD attached to the new motherboard's IDE controller.

It's just a driver issue. Before the OS loads, it needs correct IDE drivers, that's all.... it's an easy fix.

Another thing you can easily try is just to (while the HDD is attached to the original motherboard) switch from vendor-specific IDE drivers to "Windows Standard IDE drivers" (in Device Manager). That usually resolves this too.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Zaknafindel
hehe, lost me a bit... how would I go about installing IDE drivers for the new parts the HDD is interacting with?

I've been trying to look at this from the point of view of a computer repair person that I'd go to to have new parts installed in a system. what would they do to replace parts and have the machine up and running like new without the user needing to reinstall apps and windows and the like? I just talked to my mother and told her she might need to reinstall stuff and she said she really didn't want to go through all that and that she was gonna call a local computer shop and see what they say about it. It got me to thinking that there must be some other way...that computer shop's must have a way to receive a computer, swap new parts in, and return the computer to the user in a working fashion with all their programs and stuff right where they left it. How would I go about doing that?

We can get you going. Just put the HDD back in the old MB. Install the new MB's IDE drivers (from the new MB's driver CD that came with it). If you cannot do this (if the program refuses to install for some odd reason) just switch the IDE controller to "standard Windows IDE controller" driver, and then boot it on the new motherboard. That should work.

I'm assuming you're using parallel ATA drives.

Machines typically won't boot on a new motherboard for exactly two reasons:
1. The HALs don't match. Nowadays this is a bit unusual of a problem.
2. The hard disk drivers required to boot aren't present. This is your problem, based on what I'm hearing.

If the old motherboard died and fell off the face of the earth, then your other alternative would be to do an 'upgrade-in-place' install of Windows XP (ie reinstall XP to the same directory), which would also fix this. However, that can sometimes cause other problems, so simply putting the right IDE driver on there is a far better solution if you possibly can.

 

[Zaknafindel]

got my mom's comp working! ahh, that's one of two

thanks so much for the help everyone!

now to figure out why my comp won't even beep on startup

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Zaknafindel
got my mom's comp working! ahh, that's one of two

thanks so much for the help everyone!

now to figure out why my comp won't even beep on startup

What did you do that resolved the issue?

 

[Zaknafindel]

well it's kinda funny.... I was going to try what you suggested as it seemed like the perfect fix, but some very unfortunate things happened to the original mobo...

I did a lot of my work in my kitchen, as it's one of the only non-carpeted areas in my house. I left the remains of my mother's computer sitting on the floor in that room. We have a cat, and when she gets onto our counters while we're fixing food, we spray her with a water bottle, which keeps her away for a little while....well, the old comp took some of a blast directed at my cat. I decided to not even try it. What I went ahead and did was installed the new HDD I had, put windows on it, then made my mother's old drive the slave, and transfered some files over. After a couple hours of installing stuff all was as good as new thank goodness, cause I'm still trying to get some much needed help on my new rigs problem hehe

I'm ever so worried I fryed somethign during installation, and that would be quite the downer...I think I'll just go play some FF VI, bring back the good times of way back for a bit...

I thought maybe it was my PSU, cause it came with the case and isnt' a name brand or anything. But I'm not realy sure, cause all my fans come on and motherboard lights illuminate when I turn it on, it's just that nothing happens on screen, and I get no beeps....oh my, might end up taking it to the local repair guy, shame on me!