Replaced Motherboard and now Windows XP - Home won't load

[Russ]

The AGP slot failed on my son's Socket A Shuttle AK-32E motherboard so I
replaced the MOBO with an older used Socket A Gigabyte GA-7DX board. The
machine will boot but when it attempts to load Windows XP Home, it hangs up.
In Safe Mode, it hangs while the gagp30kx.sys driver is being loaded.

I've read some of the other posts that have stated that a "Windows Repair"
needs to be done because of the different chipsets on the new MOBO. What
worries me is that I have no reasonable means of backing up my son's 80GB HDD
and he'd be devastated if I were to lose his digital pictures and his ton of
I-tunes that he's probably invested hundreds of $ in download fees.

While I have successfully used the Recovery Console on several occasions
(thanks to the help of some of this group's members), I've never tried to
re-install or repair Windows XP where preserving the existing applications
and data was absolutely mandatory.

Incidently, in an attempt to try to get Windows XP to load, I removed the
AGP video card and put in an ancient S3 Trio PCI video card and changed the
BIOS Boot settings to VGA mode and from AGP to PCI VIDEO, but it still hangs
up at the gagp30kx.sys load.

Short of having to remove his HDD and install it in this PC as a Slave Drive
and then burn a million CD's in order to back-up his pics and songs, is there
a way to do a Windows Repair without losing the data???

Thanks---

 

[David B.]

A repair install does not delete data or format the hard drive, it
reinstalls Windows over what's already there.
If the data is that important it should be backed up to external media, if
the hard drive fails you may loose it all.

 

[Russ]

A repair install does not delete data or format the hard drive, it
reinstalls Windows over what's already there.
If the data is that important it should be backed up to external media, if
the hard drive fails you may loose it all.

--

Thanks for your quick reply David. I agree about backing up to an external
device, but doing it is not something my teenage son really ever thinks about
until something bad happens.

I've explained to him that there's a chance that I may lose something, but
at this point he seems to be resolved to that prospect.

This is a "How to Perform a Windows Repair" link that I found in a similar
post on this site: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
So I'm going to follow the instructions provided by that link as best as I
can.

Thanks again for you quick reply.