PC wont boot past bios help?

cooljohnny2x4

Reputable
Jul 20, 2014
2
0
4,510
I am pretty knowledgeable on computer hardware and software and have built 3 gaming pcs but this ones got me stumped and it could be something really simple or (more likely) not so simple so im calling any expert on computers to help me out with this. As a fun project i decided to do a mineral oil submerged pc build in an aquarium. I bought an older pc (win xp sp3, amd dual core cpu, 4gb ram, radeon x550) that the owner had put some decent upgrades (ram psu gpu [not pci-e so the gpu is one of the best you can get for it]) as the donor, bought a 5 gal aquarium that i modded to fit everything nicely while also looking great. After all the parts had been submerged and everything was plugged in the system booted up fine and was running smoothly. Like a total dumb a** i decided to mount the HDD on the back of the tank even though it would sit fine on the psu (also mounted on back) and somewhere along the line the drive was corrupted and when i tried to boot it would click and have a boot error once the pc got bast the bios. I figured i would just get a new HDD and win7 for it once i got back to my house (i was at a friends) but as a test i hooked up the ssd (with win8.1) from my gaming rig to it and after it passed the bios it flashed the blue windows logo and then some code or numbers appeared in the top left corner of the screen, and then the pc rebooted. The blue windows logo does not show up anymore it just goes straight to the code in the top left then reboot. Could the mobo be linked to the specific copy of windows that it came with? Do i need a new donor pc? Any help or info on what potential issues could be would be greatly appreciated. I am about to put linux or something on a flash drive and try to boot off that. I tried a different sata cable and a different sata port on the mobo so it is not that. Also some extra info.- when i hooked the ssd back up to my pc windows launched startup repair (because it failed to boot on the mineral oil pc i think) and i had a mini panic attack that the ssd was cashed lol but once restarted all was well :p. Pics of the mineral oil build will be attached for anyone that is interested in what it looks like (although only about 4/5 of the oil is in it at the moment as i am waiting to add the small plastic plant and the rest of the oil until i can get it working. Thanks. Pictures: http://postimg.org/image/h9w729mt9/ and http://postimg.org/image/m20v63mbt/

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Solution
Awesome idea, thanks for the pics - if I read you right, I think the problem you have is that typically Windows installs itself with refernce to the PC hardware it finds itself on, so I suspect when you attached the SSD, the Win 8 install just didn't manage to cope with the hardware. In short, you need to re-install Win 8.

As to licence activation - this may be an issue, as technically Windows is licensed per machine but in reality this means per mobo - however if you have only run that copy of Windows with one mobo, you should be able to get through phone registration with one more mobo, so you should be ok this time

(or just use Linux)

Btw once it's running, can you post a video? I'm particularly interested to see how the fans...

snowctrl

Distinguished
Awesome idea, thanks for the pics - if I read you right, I think the problem you have is that typically Windows installs itself with refernce to the PC hardware it finds itself on, so I suspect when you attached the SSD, the Win 8 install just didn't manage to cope with the hardware. In short, you need to re-install Win 8.

As to licence activation - this may be an issue, as technically Windows is licensed per machine but in reality this means per mobo - however if you have only run that copy of Windows with one mobo, you should be able to get through phone registration with one more mobo, so you should be ok this time

(or just use Linux)

Btw once it's running, can you post a video? I'm particularly interested to see how the fans cope...
 
Solution

cooljohnny2x4

Reputable
Jul 20, 2014
2
0
4,510


I was hoping it would be a simple fix- thanks for your input! The PC booted smoothly off an ubuntu iso flash drive. As for the fans they spin faster than i thought they would but will burn out from the load of the oil, i believe. I uploaded a short video to yt, and will probably make a more in depth video after the rest of the oil is in the tank, as well as when i put in the decorations, leds, hdd, and windows (7 home premium most likely as ive heard win8-8.1 is difficult on older pcs despite lighter code), although an ssd would be cool because it could be submerged in the oil too:p. Thanks again for your help! [video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dJicJCseLA"][/video]