New Motherboard, hard drive not detected

[heavyarmoire]

Hello, first I'll start off with saying I did more than just upgrade the motherboard and I'm sorry I couldn't have just one upgrade at a time. I'll just give you a brief history because sometimes that's important.
I have an m2n sli-deluxe with some 2.3ghz cpu (I could get the name on it but I'm running on a laptop at the moment) plugged in and 3 gigs of ram.
I decided to upgrade my processor, and discovered my beautiful motherboard had to be phased-out. So phasing I did, and ended up with:
2x 8gig ram sticks
Processor: intel i5 2500 3.3ghz
motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V LE LGA z77
with an older
HDD: Sata2 (3 gig connection, so I assume sata 2)

I installed the motherboard and processor fine. On a side note it felt like the processor was being squeezed really tight by the locking mechanism thingie, but I made sure the processor fit in the pins properly.
Getting to the point: I start windows, it boots, post beeps once to let me know it's alive, and as soon as it hits the windows loading screen it restarts.
In the bios menu I'm able to browse folders in the drive, and it's selected as the primary drive and all that stuff so it can tell it's there. Everything looks fine until I start windows. It's entirely possibly I installed some of the connections on the board improperly, because I haven't touched them in almost 5 years.
I'm fairly certain I installed everything correctly, but the disc drive is IDE and I hadn't thought to check that in the board. I read somewhere on here that certain connections if improperly installed cause windows to freak so maybe that's it.
I can also take pictures if needed.
P.S. I have a 650w power supply, and disconnecting my gpu did make it run louder, though that statement is very ignorant.
Sorry if I'm forgetting something, I do have a camera though, and I'm more than willing to work to get this ironed out.

 

[THE UNKNOWN]

This you need to check for improper connections

www.tomshardware.com/reviews/building-pc,511.html

 

[THE UNKNOWN]

www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-your-own-pc,2601.html

 

[smorizio]

per asus spec there no ide port on the mb. if your talking about the sata controler it should be set to achi mode. the problem with windows not booting is that it trying to boot using the older mb drivers and chipsets and there not there anymore. you should be able to boot into the drive using f8 safe mode and under device manager remove all the drivers there and then reboot. on reboot have the mb cd ready to install the drivers you ned to run the new mb.

 

[THE UNKNOWN]

Imo go to bios change ACHI TO IDE

 

[heavyarmoire]

I tried swapping ACHI to IDE to no avail, and I've installed everything correctly so far.
My problem now is that I don't have a cd drive (it has the wide flat ribbon connection which my mobo doesn't have) and I can't boot under safe mode.
Rather, sometimes I can boot to the windows login screen, but the mouse and keyboard don't work in any of the usb connections.
I'm not against losing some data and formatting the hard drive, but the cd drive doesn't have a connection atm so I don't know how to proceed if I do wipe it.

 

[rajyohanson]

heavyarmoire - so the windows install section doesn't show a drive to format and install to?

 

[heavyarmoire]

If you're talking about reformatting the drive and reinstalling windows, I can't fully do that because my cd drive can't connect to my motherboard so the windows disc can't be read. It has the wide ribbon cable that can't connect to anything on my motherboard. I think it's called HDD cable upon further inspection.
When I try to boot to safe mode, it asks me to log in as administrator or my user account and I'm unable to select anything with my mouse or my keyboard. I tried all the different usb connections and none of them work, so I'm assuming there's an old motherboard bios conflict or something preventing them from being used.

 

[rajyohanson]

So your optical drive is IDE, and the motherboard is SATA?

 

[rajyohanson]

What I'm really asking is, did you take an old windows install on an old harddrive, and plug it into a new motherboard and just boot it?

 

[heavyarmoire]

Yes to both questions.

 

[rajyohanson]

Ok, so my guess is that you actually just have a driver issue going on is why you are getting the restarts without it doing anything. As soon as it tries to load windows it's crashing because it doesn't know what motherboard you have any longer. Unfortunately you need an optical drive to fix this, unless you happen to have a USB Stick or network boot method handy. :/

 

[heavyarmoire]

So I'll be getting an optical drive soon, but what is the network boot method or the USB Stick you mentioned? I do have a usb stick available and previous to this I had an internet connection.

 

[1tym]

Honestly when you do a major upgrade like this you are better off reinstalling windows. Just buy your new sata optical drive. Make sure in BIOS it's ACHI. Then go install windows and be happy with your new computer.

 

[rajyohanson]

Well both would require pre existing setups, nothing you could really do at this point. If you need to get data from the drive, you will have to slave it in somewhere or use an external usb enclosure and copy the stuff off, and when your optical drive works just format and install fresh. It's going to be a mess. Next time, make sure you uninstall your chipset drivers MINIMAL before installing a pre existing harddrive on a new motherboard. But like 1tym said you gotta just format it and go fresh.

 

[heavyarmoire]

I mean I can reinstall the old mobo and such if it would help, but it's just not in the same house at this point so I sorta ruled it out. I don't really have cash for the next week and I'd like to get situated with what I have, so what would be the best option? Just uninstall the old drivers? I won't have an optical drive for a while.

 

[heavyarmoire]

Best answer selected by heavyarmoire.

 

[nikorr]

This topic has been closed by Nikorr