Upgrade Question

[johnx60]

I just upgraded my old system to the ASUS M5A88 EV0 with 8GB of AMD 1333 and the AMD II 460 . The mobo has one IDE connector so I will keep my HDD with XP Home on it as it was the original boot drive.

1- SATA HDD
1- SATA Asus DVD
1-NVidia GE 7800 PCI
1-SRX Linksys card PCI

Problem:

The BIOS sees the IDE HDD but Windows will not boot. I get to the "Start Windows normally, or safe mode options but if I choose start normally or last good configuration, I only will see the splash screen for a quick flash , then some message on the blue screen then it starts to reboot all over.

Do I have to upgrade to a 64 Bit O/S for this processor to work?

Thank You for your help.

 

[rds1220]

First of all if you are using a 32 bit OS you are wasting money on RAM. A 32 bit OS can only use up to 4 Gigs of RAM. So you have 4 extra Gigs of memory that your OS will not and can not use. Secondly IDE HDD's are pretty old technology. Most have been replaced by SATA HDD's (which are starting to slowly be replaced by SSD's). You can try and do a new install of Windows but IMO you living back in the computer stone age (or the late 90's/early 2000's ) You can:

Get a new SATA HDD and Windows 7 64 bit OS

Keep the IDE HDD and reinstall Windows XP but still limited to 4 Gigs

Keep the HDD you have and get a SSD. You can install Windows 7 on the SSD using it as the main boot drive and the old HDD as secondary storage. You already have your stuff on the old HDD so you don't have to get a new HDD and transfer important files over or reinstall software.

 

[diellur]

The blue screen is generally due to hardware issues...if you replaced your mobo and CPU but didn't reinstall a fresh copy of Windows, I'm guessing that's where your issue may be.

 

[newt183]

^1

 

[loneninja]

Windows Xp doesn't handle massive hardware changes well, it typically requires a fresh install to get it to work when you replace most of the components.

If your still trying to use a 32bit version of Xp, than you will have a max of 4Gb ram and your graphics card memory gets subtracted from that so it's more 3-3.5Gb usable ram instead of the 8Gb you installed.

Your old IDE hard drive was probably the slowest component in your old computer, it will be noticably slower than any modern SATA hard drive, and reduce your systems performance.

My advice, install a fresh copy of a 64bit version of windows, preferably Win7 on a new SATA hard drive and use the IDE one as a secondary drive to keep all your files.