ARGH! I swapped my mobo out today, rebuilt the newest rig with my hottest hardware into a whole new case, and now I can’t boot into windows! Can you provide the answer? I’ve been dual booting vista 64 bit business and win7 64 beta on an Asus P5PKL-CM board with a QX9650 cpu. I’d been running fine with my new GTX 275 gfx and was eagerly awaiting the expected 1000w Zalman so I could SLI it with my GTX 275 Cheesecake on a 650i Cheesecake mobo. Well that came today, and after dinner with the folks, I came home and proceeded to pull it all apart and rebuild. I lapped and modded the coolermaster V8 a little bit, as well. The hardware portion of the swap went fine, though slow as I proceeded to refine the cable management. It was when I hit the power button I noticed problems (duh!). BIOS came up fine, and I reset the board to defaults and saved. Windows Boot Manager came up fine giving me my choice of Vista or Win7. Here’s where the problem lies. Both of them will lie and say that they’re Starting Windows. And they’re obstinate about it as well… continuing to repeat themselves in a monotone for as long as you want to argue and curse at them… OK, seriously then… here’s what I’ve tried… Safe mode – Pressing F8 gets me lotsa options but all of them lead to the same thing: -Repair Windows Installation -Disable Driver Authentication (or however its phrased) -Enable low Rez -Last known good They all go to “starting windows” I tried booting from the DVD to run a repair install: The loading files progress bar does its thing. Windows Boot Manager says Windows failed to start and a bunch of useful stuff about loading the dvd and repairing the os. It gives a status of 0x0000225. When I hit Enter to continue as prompted I am given the option to choose “Windows Setup [EMS Enabled]” And then we repeat the cycle Thinking SLI might be an issue, I unplugged power and SATA cables to the second gfx card. – Same old… I’ve tried to run old live knoppix and ubuntu cds, but I have different problems with them: Knoppix – loads up to language choice screen, and then I can’t use the keyboard to choose. Ubuntu gives me an error about the X server I found these links: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;824125 http://arstechnica.com/hardware/new...-motherboard-without-reinstalling-windows.ars I know I should have probably disabled/uninstalled system specific drivers before doing this as, but failed to do so. Any suggestions? Next plans: -later version of live cd (I keep thinking if I can boot into linux, I can mess with the boot file and/or remove drivers (delete manually) -remove CPU from pc and replace in old board, run and disable hardware, swap back. - all else fails… break something, then reinstall.
It's because you've gone from an Intel chipset to an NVidia chipset. The hal and registry entries that exist on your hard drive don't match up to what's on your new mobo and as soon as the kernel part of the boot procedure is loading, it fails. The preboot and boot sound fine, so the mbr and partition tables should be okay. One thing you can try is to hook up your previous setup so you can at least boot into Windows, then run msconfig, go to the boot tab, click the Advanced Options button and put a tick in the Detect HAL box. Then shutdown and try the drive in your new rig and see if boots. You *may* need to run a repair install whilst on your previous setup. Also, check on your new mobo that sata is native and not ahci. That could cause a problem. If all else fails you'll need to re-install; i.e. backup, format and install.
Thanks for the helpful reply Kenco_uk. I was hoping win7/vista was better/more flexible with the HAL and that despite going to a whole other chipset family, it would still boot and allow later driver updates/repair install. This is what I get for being in a hurry and sloppy. What do you think about the info presented in the ars technica link above? Would this process (rebuild old, clear out hardware specific driver installs, move to new mobo, reboot, install proper drivers) work for vista/win7? I'll have to look for that detect HAL option ... I haven't seen that one in msconfig. Sata is Native, and not ahci as far as I can tell in the bios. I didn't see a ahci option listed under the drives. I worry why I can't boot to the DVD with my win7 and Vista64 discs. That part doesn't seem right. I am able to boot a live Mandriva linux distro, so if it's possible to go into the system32 folder and delete drivers from the \WINDOWS\system32\drivers folder, I'd like to do that. Options always appreciated.
try it with 1 stick of ram.. original vista install discs had issues on some boards with over 2 gigs of ram.. I'm with kenco on the repair part- even if you got it to work you'd probably have issues with older drivers then windows update it before sticking the rest of your ram back in
Thanks thehippoz, I'll try it with one stick when I get home. I was wondering if the dvds wouldn't boot because it's not slipstreamed with all the updates that have been released/installed on the HD? Seems like a long shot. Man, I have NO problem with a repair install. I would LOVE to repair install... (If it's compared to completely reformatting/reinstalling It doesn't look like I'm gonna get away with not taking this pretty rig apart however.
thehippoz, your idea worked fantastically (I think). I've just removed the 2nd stick, the 2nd vid card and I'm reinstalling the Vista dvd now. (long story, but basically i'm reformatting with xp included in the multiboot..) Thank you very much for the suggestion! +rep
dang i was about to say take out the extra card for now and simplify the setup so you can get it up a running and change all the chipset drivers etc, but hippoz beat me to it as i got to the bottom of the thread dang it. Also remember its always handy to keep an old harddrive with a clean windows on it for just such a time as this. It would have allowed you to see if it was software related over hardware install error by seeing it run ok on this other drive, also it allows you to use your original HD as a slave drive and therefore access to the files on it. I suggest next time you switch from one motherboard to another or swap types of PCIe Cards that you remove all drivers that refer to the chipsets used on the old board first before you swap them out. This allows windows to boot up on the new board, see for itself it hasnt the drivers for any chipsets and hopefully go straight into installing the right ones for the new board. This would have saved you a lot of time i think wtg fixing it
