Built a new PC, used old HDDs, Windows is not booting up! Help!
Yeah, yeah, I know. You guys have been asked about this problem frequently. I've surfed this forum a lot for a long time now, and finally decided to join. But for me, it's a bit more complicated. So okay, let me give you the lowdown. Once again, this is the ever-annoying "Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this" problem. It's REALLY beginning to piss me off since I saved for over a year and spent 1,000+ dollars on this new, fairly high-performance PC only to have a dinky little crap problem like this getting in my way.
Recently, I bought parts for what could be considered… well, pretty much a brand spankin' new PC. The only things I kept from my old system, ironically (concerning this problem) are my two HDDs, my CD drive, my floppy drive, and two of the four PC3200 512 meg chips I now have in my new one (all four are the exact same make, size, and speed, so they can't be the problem).
So okay, both of my HDDs are Maxtors. One's a 35 gig which is my primary master and it holds all of my Windows and program files. The other is a 160 gig hard disk; it's the slave drive and holds all of my cherished stuff such as my art pieces, music, special files, etc., etc… to put it simply, I am NOT touching my slave drive, and I highly doubt it has anything to do with this problem anyway since it has remained unhooked the entire time. I am compulsively safe with my slave drive.
Anyway, the first time I finally got this new PC sucessfully booted and what not, none of my HDDs were reformatted at the time. So in other words, my 35 gig Windows drive was still using the OS that adapted to my old system. As I understand, this problem mostly has to do with newly installed motherboards or CPUs, so I suppose it would be good to give you all the specs of my systems both old and new:
My OLD system:
Motherboard: ASUS A7M266 (Socket A, AGP) - this mobo is at least a 5 year old model. It doesn't even have SATA outlets on it and has an ASUS 760 chipset.
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1800+
RAM: A gig of Kingston PC3200/400 MHZ RAM (2 512 meg chips) - the motherboard wouldn't support the speed, so it kicked down to 200 MHZ. I didn't care since they worked anyway.
Video: ... I don't remember. I just remember it was a crappy AGP slot video card. But it was compatible and worked.
My NEW system:
Motherboard: ASUS A8N-E (Socket 939, PCI express) - keep in mind while reading this that this sucker is one of those SUPER NEW mobos. You can tell it's new-gen since it has the 24 pin ATX power connector, PCI Express for hooking up video cards, nVidia nforce 4 northbridge chipset, and the list of supported OS' include Windows 2000 and Windows XP only. So, needless to say, this is quite an upgrade from my old mobo.
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 4000+
RAM: 2 gigs of Kingston PC3200/400 MHZ RAM (4 512 meg chips) - the newer ones came as a duel channel pair, but are still basically the same thing as the older ones I have, so I didn't really figure they'd be problematic - especially since my new PC acknowledges all four of them and shows no errors.
Video: Connect 3D Radeon X300 SE
Those are my old and new systems. Now for the story: so I hook everything up, the system boots, the picture shows on my monitor, I figure everything works. Once the booting phase gets past the BIOS, I get that ill-fated message: "Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this." So I tried the options it gave me (start in safe mode, start normally, start with the most recently successful configuration), and as usual with this problem, the PC rebooted to the error screen once again. … you'd wonder why they even give you those options if they always lead to the error again. Now, why did this happen? Here's my theory...
Remember how I said that my Windows drive was NOT formatted for this new PC and Windows was NOT reinstalled? It only makes sense that Windows won't boot since the mobo and CPU were such a dramatic upgrade. With this problem, I hear a lot that it happens because the old OS is not accustomed to the chipset of the new mobo or the new CPU, etc., etc. So perhaps that's why XP didn't start. But wait! There's more!
Instinct told me to reformat my Windows drive and reinstall Windows, so that's what I did. I have no problem formatting my Windows drive. There is nothing important on it. So I did that without concern. Thing is, HERE is the clincher… my version of XP is an upgrade-only version. Normally on my old system, I'd just install Windows 98 and upgrade to XP. Thing is, and I don't know how, but my Windows 98 disc got lost. The only other OS disc I have that is not an upgrade version is my Windows ME edition. Yeah, I know, ME sucks, but I was going to wipe it out and replace it with XP anyway — or so I thought.
So yeah, I put in my Windows 98 boot floppy, formatted my Windows drive in DOS, wiped it clean of the old XP OS and installed ME which I'd soon upgrade to XP. Everything was going fine at first. The setup screen showed up... heck, it even went through the first two phases of the installation process (initialization & copying files). But then, as with all Windows installations, after the file copy phase, the computer must reboot to continue the setup process. I was so excited to get my new PC up and running, but long behold, after the BIOS screen loads, guess what! I GET THE SAME PROBLEM! It was worded differently for ME, but I am confident it was the same error since it gave me the same options and the same overall error message, not to mention every time I tried one of those options, it just rebooted the PC and went back to the error - so yeah, it's the same darn problem. I think it said for this one: "Windows failed to start during the previous attempt." WHY is this happening!?!? I reformatted my HDD and installed a totally new version of Windows! That's like, practically starting fresh! It makes no sense! I do, however, have a theory as to why ME didn't work either...
The manual for my new A8N-E motherboard's list of supported operating systems does NOT include Windows ME. It just says Windows 2000/XP. However, it doesn't say ONLY 2000/XP... but perhaps I am being too technical. So maybe this error happened because ME is just not supported by this very new-gen motherboard. But if that's the case, then why did I get the SAME exact error as with XP? If ME wasn't supported, wouldn't it give a different error? Plus, if ME wasn't supported, why did it go through the first phase of the installation process, including the copying files phase? Wouldn't it just say that ME isn't supported before I even try to install it?
Anyway, that's the lowdown. For the most part, I just need closure from you guys. Personally, after reading what I just typed, I'm thinking that the solution from the very start was to just reformat my Windows drive and reinstall XP instead of a non-supported OS. If I was right about why ME wouldn't work, then I guess trying to install Windows 98 and upgrade from that is out of the question as well. But I don't know for sure. And if that is the case, I can't since I don't have full installs of both XP and 2000. Both of them are just upgrade versions, and to be honest, I just don't have the funds to spend 400 or more dollars on a new, full copy of XP.
While I researched this problem, I ran into all kinds of solutions such as editing the CMOS, setting up the boot priority scheme to the correct order and making other mods to the BIOS, etc., etc. Another common solution was to install the drivers for the new mobo. But how the heck am I supposed to do that without Windows? The drivers are on a CD and I tried booting with the CD into DOS, but it's giving me a bunch of totally irrelavent options such as creating drivers disks. I'd need Windows first to install them anyway, so there's no point. But overall, the most common solution for this problem was to reinstall Windows. I did that. Heck, I even reformatted my HDD. So why did I still get the error? Yet, I am somewhat skeptical since the particular version of Windows I installed (ME) isn't present on this new mobo's list of supported OS'.
So yeah, please offer some advice guys. I've ran into problems a lot whilst building this new PC, but this is by far the most stubborn and annoying. People are already suggesting I return the motherboard and CPU. But I am NOT going to return a perfectly working mobo and CPU (I mean, they obviously work - you can tell there is processing going on since ME passed its entire first installation phase!) only because Windows is being a stingy little brat. So please lend a hand, guys. You all seem to know what you're doing. As I type this, my Windows drive is once again formatted and wiped completely clean... ready to have another kind of OS installed. For now, what I plan on doing is getting a full copy of XP from somewhere and installing that and seeing if it works. If it doesn't, expect to hear from me again. Please help.
Last edited by nUcLeArEnVoY : 01-20-2006 at 02:50 AM.
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