Windows bootloader/MSI KM2M conflict

[Tom]

My parents have a 300MHz Pentium 2 with a 40GB Maxtor IDE holding a
single NTFS partition with Windows XP Pro. I am trying to move them to
a MSI KM2M motherboard with a AMD XP 2100, but Windows stops booting
with the "Error loading operating system" message.

All the following produce the same message:
- 2 different video cards (AGP and PCI)
- 2 different SDR RAMs. Both were operating okay on the old board and
each passed the slow BIOS check on the new board.
- Changing every BIOS option I can find in different combinations.
Disabled cache, disabled any not-ide built in hardware, disabled UDMA.
Resetting to "Fail-safe" default settings, resetting using the CMOS
memory clear jumper
- Running fixboot and fixmbr in Windows Recovery Console. (fixmbr
didn't change a single byte in the first 512 of the disk according to
snapshots taken in Linux)
- Moving the Maxtor to [secondary IDE,master] and then starting Windows
from lilo running on a different drive (with options other=/dev/hdc
master-boot)
- Reading
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;326676 , the
board has Award BIOS 6.0 and no option to disable LDB

After all of this I tried the drive with the old motherboard and it
still works the same as always.

Physically the drive is fine. Using Linux I can grab random bytes from
the disk and it looks okay. I'm not sure why Windows can't load from
it, but have stopped short of disassembling the MS boot loader because
I don't know anything about BIOS calls.

I have not tried Repair installation from the XP install CD because I'm
afraid it will destroy my parents' settings and they don't want to lose
them. Is this reasonable?

Any hints would be great. I don't want to leave my parents using a PII
300MHz when an 1.7GHz is in their house, but I'm flying out in about a
day.

Thank you and have a happy Dec 24,
Tom

 

[Jon Erlandson]

It's best to do a clean install but you can try this
http://www.theeldergeek.com/replace_motherboard.htm .

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

My parents have a 300MHz Pentium 2 with a 40GB Maxtor IDE holding a
single NTFS partition with Windows XP Pro. I am trying to move them to
a MSI KM2M motherboard with a AMD XP 2100, but Windows stops booting
with the "Error loading operating system" message.

All the following produce the same message:
- 2 different video cards (AGP and PCI)
- 2 different SDR RAMs. Both were operating okay on the old board and
each passed the slow BIOS check on the new board.
- Changing every BIOS option I can find in different combinations.
Disabled cache, disabled any not-ide built in hardware, disabled UDMA.
Resetting to "Fail-safe" default settings, resetting using the CMOS
memory clear jumper
- Running fixboot and fixmbr in Windows Recovery Console. (fixmbr
didn't change a single byte in the first 512 of the disk according to
snapshots taken in Linux)
- Moving the Maxtor to [secondary IDE,master] and then starting
Windows from lilo running on a different drive (with options
other=/dev/hdc master-boot)
- Reading
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;326676 , the
board has Award BIOS 6.0 and no option to disable LDB

After all of this I tried the drive with the old motherboard and it
still works the same as always.

Physically the drive is fine. Using Linux I can grab random bytes from
the disk and it looks okay. I'm not sure why Windows can't load from
it, but have stopped short of disassembling the MS boot loader because
I don't know anything about BIOS calls.

I have not tried Repair installation from the XP install CD because
I'm afraid it will destroy my parents' settings and they don't want
to lose them. Is this reasonable?

Any hints would be great. I don't want to leave my parents using a PII
300MHz when an 1.7GHz is in their house, but I'm flying out in about a
day.

Thank you and have a happy Dec 24,

Tom

XP is still trying to use the hardware profile from the original
motherboard. You need to perform the Repair install to recognize the new
hardware.

How Do I Do a "Repair Installation"?
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_install.htm

 

[Malke]

My parents have a 300MHz Pentium 2 with a 40GB Maxtor IDE holding a
single NTFS partition with Windows XP Pro. I am trying to move them to
a MSI KM2M motherboard with a AMD XP 2100, but Windows stops booting
with the "Error loading operating system" message.

All the following produce the same message:
- 2 different video cards (AGP and PCI)
- 2 different SDR RAMs. Both were operating okay on the old board and
each passed the slow BIOS check on the new board.
- Changing every BIOS option I can find in different combinations.
Disabled cache, disabled any not-ide built in hardware, disabled UDMA.
Resetting to "Fail-safe" default settings, resetting using the CMOS
memory clear jumper
- Running fixboot and fixmbr in Windows Recovery Console. (fixmbr
didn't change a single byte in the first 512 of the disk according to
snapshots taken in Linux)
- Moving the Maxtor to [secondary IDE,master] and then starting
Windows from lilo running on a different drive (with options
other=/dev/hdc master-boot)
- Reading
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;326676 , the
board has Award BIOS 6.0 and no option to disable LDB

After all of this I tried the drive with the old motherboard and it
still works the same as always.

Physically the drive is fine. Using Linux I can grab random bytes from
the disk and it looks okay. I'm not sure why Windows can't load from
it, but have stopped short of disassembling the MS boot loader because
I don't know anything about BIOS calls.

I have not tried Repair installation from the XP install CD because
I'm afraid it will destroy my parents' settings and they don't want to
lose them. Is this reasonable?

Any hints would be great. I don't want to leave my parents using a PII
300MHz when an 1.7GHz is in their house, but I'm flying out in about a
day.

You're a good son, but you did everything except the only thing that
would have worked: a Repair Install. You must do this after changing
out the hardware like that. A Repair Install should not change your
parents' settings - although you will need to reinstall Windows Updates
patches. If they have already installed SP2, you will need to make a
slipstreamed installation disk or the Repair Install will fail (unless
their XP cd is already XPSP2).

How to slipstream sp2 into XP
http://www.msfn.org/articles.php?action=show&showarticle=49
http://www.windows-help.net/windowsxp/winxp-sp2-bootcd.html

However, it is always wise to back up data first.

Here is a link to information about a Repair Install:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Malke

 

[WinGuy]

My parents have a 300MHz Pentium 2 with a 40GB Maxtor IDE holding a
single NTFS partition with Windows XP Pro. I am trying to move them to
a MSI KM2M motherboard with a AMD XP 2100, but Windows stops booting
with the "Error loading operating system" message.

All the following produce the same message:
- 2 different video cards (AGP and PCI)
- 2 different SDR RAMs. Both were operating okay on the old board and
each passed the slow BIOS check on the new board.
- Changing every BIOS option I can find in different combinations.
Disabled cache, disabled any not-ide built in hardware, disabled UDMA.
Resetting to "Fail-safe" default settings, resetting using the CMOS
memory clear jumper
- Running fixboot and fixmbr in Windows Recovery Console. (fixmbr
didn't change a single byte in the first 512 of the disk according to
snapshots taken in Linux)
- Moving the Maxtor to [secondary IDE,master] and then starting Windows
from lilo running on a different drive (with options other=/dev/hdc
master-boot)
- Reading
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;326676 , the
board has Award BIOS 6.0 and no option to disable LDB

After all of this I tried the drive with the old motherboard and it
still works the same as always.

Physically the drive is fine. Using Linux I can grab random bytes from
the disk and it looks okay. I'm not sure why Windows can't load from
it, but have stopped short of disassembling the MS boot loader because
I don't know anything about BIOS calls.

I have not tried Repair installation from the XP install CD because I'm
afraid it will destroy my parents' settings and they don't want to lose
them. Is this reasonable?

Any hints would be great. I don't want to leave my parents using a PII
300MHz when an 1.7GHz is in their house, but I'm flying out in about a
day.

Thank you and have a happy Dec 24,
Tom

If you are not replacing motherboard hardware with the same exact type then
a repair installation of XP is almost surely going to be required, because
improper motherboard drivers (at least) are otherwise installed that were
intended for the old motherboard hardware. To avoid possible loss of current
HDD content, and you say that boot disk works fine with the old motherboard,
then make a bootable image copy of it to another hard disk and thoroughly
"TEST IT" before assuming that the copy went perfectly (often it silently
does not). Be sure to check to make sure that applications work on the new
image drive, too. Others have said that this should not be necessary (and I
agree) but my experience has shown several times that Microsoft Works might
have to be reinstalled for *all* of its functionality to work again on the
new imaged drive even if everything else seems to be working just fine. So I
recommend that the CD's and their installation key be available if Works or
Office is being used. And another point, which some say should not be
necessary but my experience has found to be necessary *before* the 1st boot
of an imaged drive is to perform a full and complete check for bad sectors
and to let problems be fixed automatically. All this takes a lot of time
(and another HDD), and prudent care, and it looks like you're up against the
clock.

Winguy

 

[Rock]

My parents have a 300MHz Pentium 2 with a 40GB Maxtor IDE holding a
single NTFS partition with Windows XP Pro. I am trying to move them to
a MSI KM2M motherboard with a AMD XP 2100, but Windows stops booting
with the "Error loading operating system" message.

All the following produce the same message:
- 2 different video cards (AGP and PCI)
- 2 different SDR RAMs. Both were operating okay on the old board and
each passed the slow BIOS check on the new board.
- Changing every BIOS option I can find in different combinations.
Disabled cache, disabled any not-ide built in hardware, disabled UDMA.
Resetting to "Fail-safe" default settings, resetting using the CMOS
memory clear jumper
- Running fixboot and fixmbr in Windows Recovery Console. (fixmbr
didn't change a single byte in the first 512 of the disk according to
snapshots taken in Linux)
- Moving the Maxtor to [secondary IDE,master] and then starting Windows
from lilo running on a different drive (with options other=/dev/hdc
master-boot)
- Reading
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;326676 , the
board has Award BIOS 6.0 and no option to disable LDB

After all of this I tried the drive with the old motherboard and it
still works the same as always.

Physically the drive is fine. Using Linux I can grab random bytes from
the disk and it looks okay. I'm not sure why Windows can't load from
it, but have stopped short of disassembling the MS boot loader because
I don't know anything about BIOS calls.

I have not tried Repair installation from the XP install CD because I'm
afraid it will destroy my parents' settings and they don't want to lose
them. Is this reasonable?

Any hints would be great. I don't want to leave my parents using a PII
300MHz when an 1.7GHz is in their house, but I'm flying out in about a
day.

Thank you and have a happy Dec 24,
Tom

Are you saying you are trying to boot from the drive that was in the old
computer? A repair install is needed to do this:

http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Tom.

I have not tried Repair installation from the XP install CD because I'm
afraid it will destroy my parents' settings and they don't want to lose
them. Is this reasonable?

At the risk of "piling on", let me join the chorus: "In-place upgrade, also
known as a repair install." But let me add a couple of points...first the
"why" and then an assurance that your parents won't need to reinstall
everything.

When WinXP Setup runs, one of the first things that it does is detect your
hardware configuration. Then it customizes YOUR copy of WinXP to fit that
hardware. If a significant part of the hardware changes (and a
motherboard/chipset certainly qualifies as significant!) the Setup must be
allowed to run again to redetect the new configuration and re-customize your
copy of WinXP to fit the new environment. To WinXP, there's not much
difference between (1) moving a hard drive into a different computer and
(2)moving a new motherboard into the existing computer with the old hard
drive. Either way, the mobo/HD/chipset combination has changed and requires
reconfiguring WinXP, and the only way to do that is to run Setup again - in
other words, to reinstall WinXP.

The in-place upgrade will reinstall WinXP itself, but preserve existing
applications and data - and most of the tweaks. Many users (including
myself several times) have done the in-place upgrade and I don't recall any
who have reported loss of apps or data in the process. We can't guarantee,
though, that you won't have a power failure in the middle of the job, so a
backup is always a good idea.

In addition to the references the others supplied, here's Microsoft's
official version of how to do it:
How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q315341

Use Method 2 and note that you don't press "R" the first time it's offered,
in Step 3. Press Enter at that point and press "R" in Step 5. If it has
been less than 120 days since that copy of WinXP has been activated, you may
need to activate it again, but that step should be painless.

Also you need to be sure SP2 is installed after the reinstallation, as Malke
said. If it is included in their WinXP CD, it will be handled
automatically; otherwise, you'll have to install it again after the in-place
upgrade, which will reinstall the version on their CD (either the original
2001 version or the version including SP1 or SP1a).

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP

My parents have a 300MHz Pentium 2 with a 40GB Maxtor IDE holding a
single NTFS partition with Windows XP Pro. I am trying to move them to
a MSI KM2M motherboard with a AMD XP 2100, but Windows stops booting
with the "Error loading operating system" message.

All the following produce the same message:
- 2 different video cards (AGP and PCI)
- 2 different SDR RAMs. Both were operating okay on the old board and
each passed the slow BIOS check on the new board.
- Changing every BIOS option I can find in different combinations.
Disabled cache, disabled any not-ide built in hardware, disabled UDMA.
Resetting to "Fail-safe" default settings, resetting using the CMOS
memory clear jumper
- Running fixboot and fixmbr in Windows Recovery Console. (fixmbr
didn't change a single byte in the first 512 of the disk according to
snapshots taken in Linux)
- Moving the Maxtor to [secondary IDE,master] and then starting Windows
from lilo running on a different drive (with options other=/dev/hdc
master-boot)
- Reading
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;326676 , the
board has Award BIOS 6.0 and no option to disable LDB

After all of this I tried the drive with the old motherboard and it
still works the same as always.

Physically the drive is fine. Using Linux I can grab random bytes from
the disk and it looks okay. I'm not sure why Windows can't load from
it, but have stopped short of disassembling the MS boot loader because
I don't know anything about BIOS calls.

I have not tried Repair installation from the XP install CD because I'm
afraid it will destroy my parents' settings and they don't want to lose
them. Is this reasonable?

Any hints would be great. I don't want to leave my parents using a PII
300MHz when an 1.7GHz is in their house, but I'm flying out in about a
day.

Thank you and have a happy Dec 24,
Tom

 

[Tom]

Thank you so much for the replies, they have been very helpful. Sadly
the computer has not been so kind.

After reading the first few replies I put in the new motherboard,
booted the WinXP CD and went to Repair installation. But no
installation was found, even though C:\WINDOWS was listed a few hours
ago and I had tried to avoid writing to the disk! I changed to the old
motherboard and it now failed to boot with a corrupt
system32\config\system error. I tried to follow
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545 but config\system could not be
copied. chkdsk /p exited at ~40% with "The volume appears
to contain one or more unrecoverable problems". I used an extra HDD
running XP Home Edition to copy a recent
_restore{...}\RPx\Snapshot\system,sam,... to config\system and did an
In-place install with the old motherboard. Post settings were preserved
so I was back to where I started.

With the new motherboard I booted the XP CD, selected Repair C:\WINDOWS
and left it working. It copied files and rebooted to exactly the same
error I started with: "Error loading operating system". I started a
Repair C:\WINDOWS again (it detected the aborted installation) and the
error reproduced.

I ran chkdsk /p in the recovery console. It did not give me the
"unrecoverable problems", but detected errors and increased kilobytes
available during each of about 4-8 back to back runs. Then it finished
with no errors twice.
I did another in-place install with the new MB and 40GB Maxtor, but
still got the "Error loading operating system" problem.
I may need to try a clean install, but think I won't have time and
restoring only data from the Norton Ghost image on DVDs will be a pain.

Any ideas why Windows is so uncooperative with an MSI KM2M
motherboard[1], 128MB PC100/256MB PC133 (tried on their own and
together, pass a slow BIOS check), AMD XP 2100 and 40GB Maxtor
DiamondMax Plus 8? I don't think it even gets past the bootloader code
in the MBR because the string "Error loading operating system" is about
400 bytes from the start of the disk.

Thank you for the encouragement to use the in-place install.

Tom

Argh!

[1] It's listed in the Windows Catalog
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ca...gn=4427e275-11d3-181a-2d85-24529d18ee6b&tab=3

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Well, the hard work of backup can't really be avoided if you want to make
the try safely. A Repair is the standard requirement.

Changing a Motherboard or Moving:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Did you do a repair installation after changing the motherboard and cpu? If
not, you need to. See:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Tom]

Please see my second post with subject "Windows bootloader/MSI KM2M
conflict even after in-place upgrade"
After
getting a few replies here strongly suggesting a repair install I did
it. But even after doing a repair install I still get the "Error
loading operating system". Unfortunately since then 2 people have since
replied to the original question and nobody has replied to the second
post.

I don't know why the repair install failed and can't be sure that a new
install will work. Unless a miracle occurs I'm going to have to put the
PII 300MHz back.
I'm not happy because I bought this upgrade for my parents but have
been unable to get it working. No thanks to Microsoft (Liunx has been
useful for me but won't easily support all the hardware my parents
use).

Tom