How to get XP Running after a new M'Board & CPU

[scooter2591]

I'm really in need of some advice after a massive problem I've just encountered.... (ALSO, This is the 1st time I've used this site so if I'm posting in the wrong forum please forgive me BUT then please suggest where I could an answer to this problem)

Here's the situation

My wife runs a machine with a removable bootable disk (in one
of those slide out trays) She has 3 disks:
· Win98SE for low end use; 20Gig
· Win2k for Web development use; 40Gig and
· WinXP for .NET experimentation 40Gig

The Motherboard failed and we went for a budget replacement solution with a new ECS K7S5A motherboard and AMD XP1600 CPU (still using the old SD RAM).

After a lot of CD Rom swapping Win98 came back to life but BOTH Win2k and WinXP failed very early on in the bootup process with dire warnings (sorry I don't have exact text at the moment but could get it if required) saying there may have been virus corruptions or the HW may have been changed.

Neither 2K or XP even get to the point of trying to build new driver files before they throw in the towel......

Nuking the XP disk is not too big of a problem but the Win2K setup has a "LOT" invested into it and we really do need to recover it.

Where do I start or where do I go to get the information I need

Thanks


Scooter

 

[pat]

Well, if XP is not that important, reinstall it and use it to recover your stuff on the 2K partition.

But have you tried to boot in safe mode in XP? if it boots, then you may be able to fix it. If it dont, try to repair it using the technique posted here:

<A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/software/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=26114#26114" target="_new">How do I repair corrupt system file</A>

or, at last resort, you coul installe XP over win98 to get your files backuped. Or even borrow another HD and install XP on it, then put your other slave and get you stuff

dont try to work on your win2000 partition, since this is the more important one for you

Good luck

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

 

[nja469]

When changing mobo and CPU you can almost always anticipate needing to reinstall the OS whether it be win 98/2k/XP. <b>Important data should always be backed up when changing components.</b> Sometimes you can get away with it on 98, but with 2k and XP the hardware profile totally changes and all the drivers it used for your system that were associated with your previous board and chipset conflict with the new setup and they cannot run without reinstallation.

As for recovering files on the drive with 2k, simply have it set up as a host drive. With win 98 loaded you can simply "explore" your win2k drive in windows explorer and copy over all the important stuff to the win98 drive and burn to CD or backup however you need to do so. After this you can safely format and reinstall the win2k and XP.