XP won't boot after replacement of failed motherboard

[Guest]

Please help! I have an eMachine system in which the motherbaord died. Was
running XP Home. I purchased a replacement motherboard and some additional
memory. Upon installing this new h/w, the computer won't boot; it gets part
way thorugh the boot process then reboots, forever. I've tried safe mode and
see the last line it displays before the reboot is where it loads Mup.sys.
What is happening? What can I do? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Brian

 

[DL]

You probably need to do a repair installation of winxp.
It maybe that your winxp cd/recovery cd is locked to the origonal mobo, so
unless you used a new eMachine mobo you might be out of luck, unless you
have a full retail winxp cd

 

[Guest]

I did use a new eMachine mobo. I do not have a Windows XP CD, just the
eMachine system recovery CD. I believe this only allows me to revert to the
as original system state.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Please help! I have an eMachine system in which the motherbaord died. Was
running XP Home. I purchased a replacement motherboard and some additional
memory. Upon installing this new h/w, the computer won't boot; it gets part
way thorugh the boot process then reboots, forever. I've tried safe mode and
see the last line it displays before the reboot is where it loads Mup.sys.
What is happening? What can I do? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Brian

Normally, and assuming a retail license (many factory-installed
OEM installations are BIOS-locked to a specific chipset and therefore
are *not* transferable to a new motherboard - check yours before
starting), unless the new motherboard is virtually identical (same
chipset, same IDE controllers, same BIOS version, etc.) to the one on
which the WinXP installation was originally performed, you'll need to
perform a repair (a.k.a. in-place upgrade) installation, at the very least:

How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q315341

Changing a Motherboard or Moving a Hard Drive with WinXP Installed
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html

The "why" is quite simple, really, and has nothing to do with
licensing issues, per se; it's a purely technical matter, at this point.
You've pulled the proverbial hardware rug out from under the OS. (If
you don't like -- or get -- the rug analogy, think of it as picking up a
Cape Cod style home and then setting it down onto a Ranch style
foundation. It just isn't going to fit.) WinXP, like Win2K before it,
is not nearly as "promiscuous" as Win9x when it comes to accepting any
old hardware configuration you throw at it. On installation it
"tailors" itself to the specific hardware found. This is one of the
reasons that the entire WinNT/2K/XP OS family is so much more stable
than the Win9x group.

NOTE: Unless you got that replacement motherboard from eMachines, the
eMachines Recovery CD won't work; you'll need to purchase a new (retail)
license for WinXP.


--

Bruce Chambers

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[DL]

Then as Bruce states, you will have to use this.
I hope your docs are backed up elsewere.