Motherboard swap-out,Windows no longer boots from SATA drive

[Deluks]

I've just taken out my old ASUS A7N8X mobo and CPU to sell on ebay, and I'm using an old MSI K7N2G to take it's place til I get my new setup. I didn't wanna go through the rigmarole of a fresh install as I'll have to do that with my new system anyway when I get it, but I was expecting the old windows to pick up the new mobo, ask for a few drivers and carry on as normal.
I've installed the sata raid drivers, which are needed for the MSI board, and it detects the drive on boot and procedes to windows. Then it stops on the 'options screen' where it asks you to choose safe mode, with networking, last good config and start windows normally. I've tried all of these and it just hangs. Either just freezing when I press the key, or starting to load files and stopping halfway through the list of drivers.

I then tried to repair the windows installation from Windows XP disc, but it doesn't recognise any drives at all and forces me to abort install/repair.

Any clues as to what might be wrong??



The other issue which may be related, is that whenever the machine reboots/resets, (usually after changing settings in the bios), the screen goes blank, the video card fails to give out a signal. Yet if I switch machine off at the PSU and restart, all is fine again and it starts the first part of the boot process.


I'm not sure if this is defective components, corrupt windows install, or what?


Specs:

Athlon XP2200
Enermax noisetaker 470w
Seagate Barracuda 200GB SATA
Radeon 9800Pro
NEC 2500 DVD-rw
WinXP Pro SP2

I was using Athlon XP2800 on the Asus, but the msi already had the 2200 and heatsink attached, so this will become my second machine when new bits arrive. I was using it a few days ago with an IDE drive. No probs.

Anyone had similar experiences?

 

[VS]

Moving a HD into a new system is dangerous at best, you may have installed the SATA drivers but there are a whole raft of other drivers required for your old HD to be able to work and play well with the new mobo (chipset, USB, graphics, audio etc etc). It is very unlikely that windows would just "pick them up and ask for them".

The safest way to do it is first to create an image of your old HD in case of losses, and secondly to IMMEDIATELY run a repair install but this must be done straight away without ever trying to boot to windows. By trying to boot to windows I believe you have just lost a game of Russian roullette and in the time you have spent "investigating" you could probably have done a fresh install and got it working

BTW, does your MSI mobo recognise the full size of your HD?

 

[Igorian]

Trying to run a version of XP on a new MB is not as straight forward as just changing the board and loading new drivers. the HAL will be wrong and it won't boot. Sometime you can get away with doing a sysprep, which resets the SSIDs and to some extent the HAL, but it doesn't always work with devices with a different HAL from the original. The best approach is to backup and load afresh.

If you are trying to re-install windows with SATA drives, you will need to have the SATA drivers on a floppy disk and the motherboard disk usually has a routine for creating it. When you begin to boot from the XP disk, it will display a message which says something like Press F6 to load additional drivers. So, press F6 and wait for it to prompt for the additional device (There is no confirmation that you have pressed F6, so just wait). Press S to select a new device and select the appropriate driver from the list (You need to have the floppy with drivers inserted).

 

[Deluks]

I have done this before, sometimes without problems, and sometimes a windows repair fixed it...but this is the first time I've tried it with a SATA. I did the F6 thing and loaded drivers from floppy, I'm beginning to think maybe I used the wrong drivers though.
Sod it I'll put the ASUS back and backup my windows partition.

 

[JohnD]

And backup all your data.

The Win XP "Files & Settings Transfer Wizard" is idea for what you are trying to do (which is basically to build a new PC).

 

[Igorian]

I have done this before, sometimes without problems, and sometimes a windows repair fixed it...but this is the first time I've tried it with a SATA. I did the F6 thing and loaded drivers from floppy, I'm beginning to think maybe I used the wrong drivers though.
s** it I'll put the ASUS back and backup my windows partition.

The driver is usually not the first in the list. Asrock manuals are usually pretty good when it comes to SATA setup and should tell you which one to use. As I said before, NT operating systems are fussy when it comes to changing the hardware and while a repair install works, most of the time, I have seen cases where it just doesn't want to know. Even with a repair install, you may need to re-activate Windows.

 

[eggplant]

I doubt you used the wrong "F6" disk, if you had, setup would have told you it couldnt find the drive, or you would have blue screened earlier.
As for swapping the board, you MIGHT get away with it if its the same chipset, but often a nice blue screen which contains text that is about as helpful as a brake lights on an exorcet missile is probably what you will get.