Handing down my old mobo/cpu/mem

[abaez]

So I had been using my dfi lanparty nforce mobo, amd opteron 146 and 2 gig of g.skill mem and upgraded to a core2duo.

Handed down the old stuff to my mom's pc and used the exact same hard drive and simply bought a new pci express vidcard for it.

So, I get windows xp to install via the blue background dos-like install. After that finishes usually it reboots and then goes to a windows-like interface to finish installation.

Whenever I finish the first part of the install, (blue dos-like background), for whatever reason when it reboots it does not go into the second part of the install. The error comes up as "Error loading operating system." I tried installing on a completely separate hard drive and got the same error. Tried installing with the cdrom as slave, moving the ata cables, doing a complete reformat via the xp install and nothing works.

Every time the first part of the install finishes, on next reboot I get an error.. I have tried removing all pci cards and installing and nothing. I cannot figure out what the problem is. I have another hard drive I am going to try tomorrow, but does anyone have any ideas? Should I go buy an sata drive and try installing on that? I cannot figure out what else the problem would be, I was using this same system only a month ago on my own machine. Help!

Edit: All mobo settings are at default, it's a new antec earthwatts power supply as well.

 

[mechBgon]

The motherboard's boot-device priority list might need to be reconfigured. Which exact DFI are we talking here?

 

[abaez]

Boot device priority is CDROM then HD. That isn't the issue, it will say push any button to boot from CDROM and then it'll switch to the hard disk (I can hear the HD being accessed), then get the error message.

I believe its the DFI Lanparty NForce2.. can't recall and the box is at my parents.

 

[mechBgon]

Try this:

1) start WinXP Setup again from the CD

2) when it shows you the HDD partitions, delete all the partitions, then exit from Windows Setup by pressing F3 twice

3) now start WinXP Setup a second time. Create a new partition, quick-format NTFS, and keep on going. See if it'll work now.

 

[abaez]

Will do, but not sure what that'll do. If that doesn't work, I guess I'll have to snag an sata drive and see if that will do it.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: abaez
Will do, but not sure what that'll do. If that doesn't work, I guess I'll have to snag an sata drive and see if that will do it.

What's the full error you get? I have to believe it's more than 'error loading operating system' - can you spell it out?

 

[abaez]

I know it seems weird - For one drive it's "Error loading operating system" - I think it might be unique to the mobo.

For the other drive I tried it's the NON-SYSTEM DISK OR DISK ERROR (even though I can hear the drive seeking for a second or two) and setup installs the first half fine.

 

[abaez]

Turns out it was the printer connected to the USB port. For whatever reason it was showing up as a removable device on drive c: and overriding everything else so the machine wouldn't boot. Once I unplugged it it was fine. Pretty ridiculous.