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At my wit's end, plz help. Trying to use old HDD in new system

Forum Homebuilt Systems : New System Build - At my wit's end, plz help. Trying to use old HDD in new system

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Chihlidog   10-13-2008 at 11:26:19 PM

So, here's the deal, I built a system and want to use my old HDD. I have a Windows disc and cd key. The old HDD wont boot at all. I set it up to boot from CD and it goes to "setup is starting windows".

This took like a half hour. Then it gave me an error message on a black screen. I am confused, I thought I would have the option to repair, but I never get that option.

A new install is fine with me, but I couldnt even get THAT to work. There are some very light scratches on the CD, I have used worse but could that be the problem? If not, what else could be? I am very much an amateur at system building. I built the one I am posting from but that was a brand new, clean hard drive and I gave it a fresh install, no problems at all.

This one is killing me. Any advice on where to even start? I am trying it again as I post this with a diffferent, faster CD Rom drive installed. I doubt that will solve the problem, however.

ANY help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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boomhowar   10-13-2008 at 11:47:23 PM
- 0 +

Please list your hardware.

Have you gotten your system to install using a different hard drive? (i know you want to install windows on your old one -this questions is for troubleshooting)

Answer these and I can have a better understanding of your problem.

Reply to boomhowar
Chihlidog   10-13-2008 at 11:59:30 PM
- 0 +

Hardware:

AMD Athlon 64x2 5000+

Gigabyte motherboard

2 gigs ddr2 800 ram

Radeon 4670 vid card

Seagate 40 gig IDE hard drive.

No, I have 2 hard drives I am trying it with, the other one, even when I go into the boot menu and tell it to boot from CD rom, xomes up with the black screen "we apologize, windows did not start up normally last time, what do you want to do, boot into safe mode, start windows normally, etc"

No matter what I do from there, the system restarts itself. That is an old Maxtor that does that one to me.

The one I am trying to use, the 40 gig Seagate, just doesnt want to cooperate at all either. I got the repair option finally on that one, and borked it because I could remember the admin password, and it restarted after 3 tries.

Now it is hanging on the "press any key to boot from CD"

I had a feeling that this CD rom drive was going bad when I was still using it in my old comp, maybe that is compounding the problem, but using this one is when I got the repair option. Using the (old OLD) one that seems to work fine, I dont get that option, it goes straight into setup.

Reply to Chihlidog
ram1009   10-14-2008 at 12:26:32 AM
- 0 +

You don't say what the old HDD was previously in. If it was in a store bought (aka Dell, HP, Compaq, etc) computer, it will probably never boot with anything but the bios from a MB provided by the original manufacturer. Every store bought computer I've seen had the BIOS and HDD boot sector modified to recognize only each other. If this is not your problem then you just need to get a new HDD. They are way too cheap to get upset over. Personally I don't think it's advisable to use an old HDD when building a new box anyway. I always use a new HDD and install the old one as a second drive and migrate data at my leisure.

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Chihlidog   10-14-2008 at 12:26:33 AM
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OK, how's this for another problem. My bios wants the DVD rom to be the master, and does not recognize a slave drive. When I unplug the dvd rom drive, THEN it will recognize the hdd, but even when I save those settings it doesnt want to go back now.

Anyone know what this could be from??

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Oakley707   10-14-2008 at 12:35:05 AM
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Sounds like you should change the jumpers on the back of the harddrive. Are you familiar with that?

Message quoted 1 times
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Chihlidog   10-14-2008 at 12:37:09 AM
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Oakley707 wrote :

Sounds like you should change the jumpers on the back of the harddrive. Are you familiar with that?



Yes, I know how to do that. It is set as the master right now but I could change them around and see if that does the trick. Funny thing is, it wasnt doing this to me earlier.

Reply to Chihlidog
Oakley707   10-14-2008 at 12:40:23 AM
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Hmm.. that is odd.. After re-reading your post it's possible that your drive is going out. If it is hanging until you unplug the dvd rom it sounds like BIOS is trying to provide power to the drive and understand what it is. It should eventually stop hanging there and say that "IDE Drive 1 Not found" at some point. How long have you waited? Keep in mind this is just my $.02.

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dallasjoh   10-14-2008 at 01:27:31 AM
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If you have the hard drive on the same ribbon cable as the dvd rom then connect the hard drive at the end of the ribbon and set jumper to master. Connect dvd rom to the middle connection on the cable and set jumpers to slave. Boot up to bios and set boot to cd. See if that works if not, then connect the hard drive to another computer and format the drive to delete all the old partitions. Then reinstall and try again.

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geofelt   10-14-2008 at 01:28:06 AM
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First of all, run memtest86+ for a couple of passes to verify that all of the ram is OK. I once had a similar problem, traced to a bad stick.

The hard drive vendors should have a stand alone utility that will initialize the hard drive for you.

Reply to geofelt
Chihlidog   10-14-2008 at 01:45:05 AM
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OK, I broke down and went to Best Buy (my wife and I are gonna kill each other if this thing isnt working like NOW, couldnt wait for newegg) and I slapped a 320 gig sata in there.

Formatting as I post this. Hopefully there will be no more issues with this PC. Was a 200 dollar build, now it's 300. Ugh.

Thanks for the help, guys.

Reply to Chihlidog
arson94   10-14-2008 at 01:53:55 AM
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Man, I highly suggest that you just not have your DVD drive and your HDD on the same ribbon cable period. You don't want your HDD and DVD drive running parallel on the same channel, especially when installing Windows or reading a CD while in Windows. The error message on the black screen is more than likely something wrong with the CD, as in scratches even if they are slight, but could also be a factor of your CD and HDD being on the same cable. You should try a new CD and use your HDD and DVD as both masters on different PATA channels (ports). If you only have one PATA channel (port), then getting an SATA drive is your best bet anyhow.

Message quoted 1 times
Reply to arson94
Chihlidog   10-14-2008 at 01:58:55 AM
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arson94 wrote :

Man, I highly suggest that you just not have your DVD drive and your HDD on the same ribbon cable period. You don't want your HDD and DVD drive running parallel on the same channel, especially when installing Windows or reading a CD while in Windows. The error message on the black screen is more than likely something wrong with the CD, as in scratches even if they are slight, but could also be a factor of your CD and HDD being on the same cable. You should try a new CD and use your HDD and DVD as both masters on different PATA channels (ports). If you only have one PATA channel (port), then getting an SATA drive is your best bet anyhow.



Yup only one port for the old hd/dvd cable, had to run them on the same ribbon.

But as I mentioned in the post above, I broke down and bought a SATA drive, and it is now formatting. Hopefully the scratches arent the issue if I got this far. I think I am fine from here out, just have to install drivers and microsoft service packs now and I should be good to go.

GOnna have to install a few games on this one and try it out to see how it does, it might actually outperform MINE!! haha My wife really made out on this deal, the only thing slower on hers is the cpu, hers is an athlon 64x2 5000+, mine is a 6000, so that should be bery noticeable.

I keep threatening to steal her ram and her video card for my system. :D




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