Windows XP won't boot after A7V8X-X installation

[Mike Dodd]

I replaced a working PII/400 motherboard with a new-in-box A7V8X,
Athlon XP 2600, and 256MB of PC2700 (333MHz) DDR RAM, which the dealer
set up and tested on his bench. Now Windows XP Home Edition won't
boot.

It gives me a "We're sorry..." error message and several options
including last known good configuration and safe mode. Nothing works;
the machine resets. Just before resetting, there's some other error
message that disappears too fast to read.

In the safe mode, I see a bunch of filenames scroll by, and the final
one on the list is AGP400 or something. I do not have an AGP card,
only the PCI card that was in the system before.

The machine does start up. The keyboard and video work, and I can get
into the BIOS setup by pressing Delete. Once there, the settings look
good - HD and CD-ROM detected, as is the 256MB of RAM. I can change
and save settings.

Also, I can boot from the Windows XP CD-ROM and go into the Rescue
Console. There, I ran CHKDSK which reported no errors on the hard
drive. I also can get a directory listing from the hard drive, but I
didn't try opening any files.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what to try next? Thanks in
advance.

Mike

 

[g&l]

I replaced a working PII/400 motherboard with a new-in-box A7V8X,
Athlon XP 2600, and 256MB of PC2700 (333MHz) DDR RAM, which the dealer
set up and tested on his bench. Now Windows XP Home Edition won't
boot.

It gives me a "We're sorry..." error message and several options
including last known good configuration and safe mode. Nothing works;
the machine resets. Just before resetting, there's some other error
message that disappears too fast to read.

In the safe mode, I see a bunch of filenames scroll by, and the final
one on the list is AGP400 or something. I do not have an AGP card,
only the PCI card that was in the system before.

The machine does start up. The keyboard and video work, and I can get
into the BIOS setup by pressing Delete. Once there, the settings look
good - HD and CD-ROM detected, as is the 256MB of RAM. I can change
and save settings.

Also, I can boot from the Windows XP CD-ROM and go into the Rescue
Console. There, I ran CHKDSK which reported no errors on the hard
drive. I also can get a directory listing from the hard drive, but I
didn't try opening any files.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what to try next? Thanks in
advance.

Mike

XP is having a fit because all the drivers for the motherboard & chipset are
different.
I just recently swapped 2 mobo's, one an A7V8X-X, and got it up & running
thusly:

1. Restarted the PC with my WinXP cd in the drive, then booted from CD
2. Selected Repair installation.

Then the PC did what appeared to be a complete install of WinXP again, the
full 20 minutes, which had me worried thinking I would lose all my installed
programs.
When rebooted, it stated that I would need to reactivate before I could use
the PC. The problem is that I couldnt remap the network connections
(internet connection was on another PC), so I couldn't activate. Rang the
phone no. and activated over the phone, no probs. All previously installed
software still working. Yay.

The other PC was a swap of one ASUS board for another, and all I had to do
was reload the motherboard drivers then reactivate. It was a bigger hassle
doing the ASUS -> ASUS swap, as all the USB periphs got scrambled.

 

[Bob Knowlden]

If you're trying to run an existing XP installation in a system with a
different mainboard etc., you will probably need to do a repair installation
as a minimum.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

"How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation) of Windows XP"

(In brief: change the BIOS settings to boot from the CD drive. Boot from the
XP CD. Choose to install, rather than going to the repair console. Under
install, choose repair rather than new.)

You'll have to activate XP again. (This could be a problem if you have an
OEM version of XP, but it may still be possible if you don't have a
BIOS-locked version.) You will lose everything installed through Windows
Update, but most installed applications, files, and settings will be
preserved.

There is supposed to be a subset of devices that can be deleted prior to a
mainboard swap that makes a repair install unnecessary, but a) I don't
recall which ones are necessary (but they probably include the IDE drivers),
and b) it's a bit late for your system anyway.

Some would recommend a complete re-installation of XP, but try the repair
install first, I suggest.

Good luck.

Bob Knowlden

Address may be altered to avoid spam. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[Mike Dodd]

If you're trying to run an existing XP installation in a system with a

different mainboard etc., you will probably need to do a repair installation
as a minimum.

Sigh.... Thanks to both people who suggested this. I was afraid of that.

Mike

 

[Bert]

Sigh.... Thanks to both people who suggested this. I was afraid of that.

Mike

Be very careful to make certain that you do the REPAIR. I missed that step
once and the system never was right after that.