HELP - Rebuild need advice

[Five]

New here, hopefully someone can help me out, i am fairly decnt with computers although I have no formal training so when I run into technical problems i need some input.

My computer recently died(e-machines :roll: ), when i went to turn it on I had nothing no power no LED's nothing. So a friend of mine said to try replacing the power supply, so i took a 300w PS i had out of a new case I had laying around and installed that and when i turned it on the led's lit up for a few seconds but nothing booted. Then when i tried to turn it back on again I get nothing. So I guess that the motherboard was fried and now two power supplies are fried???

Next step ordered a new power supply and a new motherboard, 300w PS and a Asus P4S8X-MX Motherboard. OK so i get everything installed, pretty much just replaced the motherboard and power supply and hooked existing hard drive, cd-rom, processor (2.6ghz Intel celeron) etc. back up to new power supply, then boot up run through the BIOS and try to run windows and this where my "new" problems start I get the message about windows XP being improperly shut down and how do I want to start windows, safe mode, safe mode with networking, command prompt, last known configuration, or start windows normally. I have tried each of these options and none of them work it just restarts the computer and I get the same screen about windows not shutting down properly. Windows will not start.

So where do i go from here, did i do something wrong? Is my hard drive toast? Is my processor toast? Or am i forgetting something. One other thing in BIOS its recognizing all my drives and processor properly and everything seems to be configured OK. Any input would greatly apprieciated thanks.

 

[Mondoman]

First of all, I doubt you fried that 2nd power supply. In any case, at installation time, Windows chooses which software modules to install based on the processor, but also on the motherboard chipset and features. Because you installed a new motherboard, you need to reinstall windows. Easiest way is to get a new hard drive as a boot drive, install windows on that, and set up your current hard drive as a secondary drive. As long as the new drive is the first one looked at for booting, it won't matter if you also have a copy of windows on your other (original) drive.

 

[Five]

Thanks mondo, So just install a new hard drive as the master (primary) and reinstall windows on that and use my existing hard drive as a slave (secondary) and I can still access and run all my files and programs, correct?

 

[Mondoman]

... So just install a new hard drive as the master (primary) and reinstall windows on that and use my existing hard drive as a slave (secondary) and I can still access and run all my files and programs, correct?

Yes, but. I would disconnect the slave drive initially until you get windows installed, because otherwise, I think it will go looking for a boot partition. You can certainly access all your files once the original drive is installed as a slave (or even a master on another IDE controller), the problem is that any of your software that made changes in the Windows registry (almost all programs these days) will likely have to be reinstalled in order to work properly, because there will be a new Windows registry associated with the new install of Windows.

 

[Five]

Ok cool thanks Mondo. I'll give it a shot.

 

[wingsofzion]

Yes that's about what i was going to suggest. DO a fresh install of windows on a new drive and work off that one.

 

[The_Prophecy]

Actually if he boots from the CD and does a proper repair install, he shouldn't need to reinstall any of his programs... XP setup should detect the existing XP installs and give you the option to repair any that it finds.

 

[Mondoman]

Actually if he boots from the CD and does a proper repair install, he shouldn't need to reinstall any of his programs... XP setup should detect the existing XP installs and give you the option to repair any that it finds.

In theory, yes, but I've seen this lead to unstable systems.

 

[The_Prophecy]

Well, I guess in these situations, it's usually a better idea to just wipe everything and start over....

 

[mesarectifier]

Yup Windows system repair is rarely effective.

 

[Five]

Of course i cant find my windows XP disc, Soooo I just ordered a new one long with a WD Caviar 80GB 8MB hard drive to do the clean install on. Should have it in a few days. I update this with the results. Thanks everyone for all the input, very helpful.