New Motherboard, can't load HD

[thicksmoke]

I've been building my own computers for years and recently decided to update my current build. I purchased a Gigabyte Z77-D3H MotherBoard, 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance RAM, and an Intel i5-3570K Processor. So I took apart the computer, put in the new MoBo, HD, and RAM, and connected almost everything back up (I couldn't connect my CD/DVD Drives since this MoBo has no IDE cable connector). My problem seems to lie with the HD, which is a Seagate 7200.12 1TB Internal SATA Drive.

When I boot the computer, I can see the MoBo startup screen, but then all I get is a cursor on a blank screen. I was able to restart and access the BIOS, and it does recognize the HD, but it won't seem to boot, despite the HD being the only thing in the boot process. I tried changing the SATA cable to the ones provided with the MoBo, and tried putting the cable in all 6 SATA slots. Nothing. I know that the cables are all fine, since I put the old MoBo back in and am using the HD and the same cables right now to post this message.

Interestingly enough, I changed the HD from IDE to AHCI in the BIOS, which causes the Windows XP logo to appear for a few seconds before I get a blue screen for about half a second, and the system restarts. Any ideas why the HD doesn't boot with the new system? The only other peripherals I have are an NVidia Graphics card (which was working fine, as I could access and use the BIOS), a Soundblaster Audio Card, and a networking card.

One other weird thing I noticed when booting up the computer is that the CPU fan takes a while to start spinning. One time, the system completely booted to the cursor before the fan finally started up. Not sure if that has anything to do with my problem, though. Let me know if any additional information is needed. Any help is appreciated.

 

[C12Friedman]

I'm pretty sure it's your operating sytem which is/was tied to the previous hardware. With that much hardware swapping a new OS license is probably needed (new copy of windows)

 

[thicksmoke]

I know that I would need to reactivate the OS, but I can't even get the OS to load with the new motherboard in order to reactivate it. When I switched back to the old Motherboard, the OS loads and I now have the message that Windows must be reactivated within 3 days due to the hardware switch, but it still loads the OS and I can use the system to activate online. With the new motherboard the OS won't even load, let alone tell me to reactivate it.

Hypothetically, if I were to reactivate the OS, maybe by calling Microsoft, how would I get the system to know that the OS has been reactivated? There wasn't anywhere for me to enter an activation code, and don't think I can connect to the Internet prior to the HD boot to activate online. Was I missing something?

 

[thicksmoke]

Never mind. I reinstalled the OS from scratch, overwriting the old one, and the system is up and running. I guess deep down I was just hoping that I wouldn't need to do that (which also meant that I had to go out and buy a SATA optical drive, something I was going to save for later). Thanks for the help, C12Friedman!

 

[thicksmoke]

Best answer selected by thicksmoke.