please help me

[oldman420]

disaster..... got the dfi installed it and it wouldnt even post after playing around i was able to get a post with a single stick of ram.
it currupted xp " i expect this" so i reinstalled xp and went to work re-doing drivers etc,
got the mb drivers installed and when i reboot the system hangs and again will not post
this time i switched around the memory to the last slot and it posted
it would not boot so i started setup again
when i get to the select partition page setup show me with two unallocated drives!!!!
one of those drives had all of my pictures music and all other user files we are talking about two years worth of carefully avoiding loss by keeping all of the important stuff seperated from xp, lost in a moment:shocked:
at any rate i cant even get xp to setup half the time it just reboots during the first stage of setup and when it does install it hangs at boot
i have tried every imaginable combo of settings and hw placement i can think of i have the boot order set right and it hangs after verify dmi pool at startup.
please help me do i have a bad mb will a bios flash help?

i am using an xp2600 m and corsair xms ddr 400
antec 350 watt psu

 

[amdskip]

Did you format the partition where xp got installed?

 

[oldman420]

ok im back
turns out this board did something to my two drive that leaves em fine to read or write to but they are not bootable. will a low level format restore the boot sector on them or am i just out two system drives.
what could cause a drive to lose everything on it including the boot sector and then apear to be fine?
wow
i think i got an evil board i will be returning it

 

[GregANDTCH]

fine to read or write to but they are not bootable

Now don't do a low-level on the drive with the data.
It'll be gone if you do.

Maybe you can "repair" the boot sector.
I've never done it, somebody should chime in.

 

[oldman420]

anybody?

 

[oldman420]

like i said something zapped the partition info inc boot sector xp now also sees both drives as i3i where they used to be 151 gigs.
should i rma the drives too
all of the info on the drives is gone so thats ok this old man will get it all back just takes time is all.

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: oldman420
like i said something zapped the partition info inc boot sector xp now also sees both drives as i3i where they used to be 151 gigs.
should i rma the drives too
all of the info on the drives is gone so thats ok this old man will get it all back just takes time is all.

No, I wouldn't rma the HDs yet. See if the GetBackData thingy works first.

Anyway, if it will post, you can d/l a free diagnostic proggy from the HD manufacturer to check the HDs. (they may want that done b4 allowing an RMA anyway).

Where are all the XP users? Don't you guys running XP have several *repair* features that can be tried? Oldman hang tight till an XP guru posts to you about these procedures.

Good Luck with ur data (oooh, what an evil mobo )

Fern

 

[oldman420]

i dld data lifegaurd tools and both drives check out
does anybody remember the dos command to fix the mbr and is there a way to test to see if this is the problem?

 

[GregANDTCH]

see if this post will help
http://www.help2go.com/postt8446.html
YMMV

 

[mobiusman]

Originally posted by: oldman420
i dld data lifegaurd tools and both drives check out
does anybody remember the dos command to fix the mbr and is there a way to test to see if this is the problem?

From DOS it's FDISK /MBR (Upon startup XP will automatically write a new MBR after this procedure).
From XP repair console it's FIXMBR
There is one other for the repair console; I can't remember it, but type HELP to get a list of commands.
-Scott

 

[Matt155]

Ok first some questions.
You have 2 hardrives?
How many partitions on each one?
What files system did you use on the partitions with data on it?
Don't hook up both drives when you replace motherboards, just one drive and when the install of OS goes fine and everything is working, then just add the other drive with the data on it.

Set everything to default in bios, use one stick of memory, video card, and one hardrive.
Take the one drive you have, format it using the manufacture utility that came with it, format it to same files system as your data disk, assumming its recoverable, if not use NTFS.
Try loading OS on that drive.
Now if you are having problems and only thing you changed was from Abit motherboard to DFI, then your hardware is not compatible with your new motherboard, most likey the memory. Set everything to default in bios, add

At worst, send DFI back and reinstall your ABit and see if you can get your data back.

Good luck

 

[oldman420]

2 drives one is a seagate 160 gig and the other is a western digital 160 gig both 7200 rpm both 8 meg cache both formatted ntfs. the data is gone as i got my system going on another hdd with my abit. both drives check out fine using data lifegaurd tools and they read write just fine i wrote zeros to the wd using this prog and now the drive is gone in my computer i hope this means it is like as new unallocated unformatted drive and i can use disk managment to get it going again. i am such a fool for leaving my user files in a unproven box i deserve to lose em for that i can of course get everything back so it really is not that bad.

i did lots of research on the dfi infinity mb and beleive it is not the board but a pbko issue.
ihad strange issues with my asus a7n8x when i first got it
i may still be a bit of a newb when it comes to some of the more advanced features of this board.
does anybody know of a good bios guide for the dfi infinity?