I get an error message after installing new motherboard

[mangoluvr]

My friends old motherboard died and I helped him install this new motherboard. Booted up the pc. Everthing read fine. Ram showed right amount, Detected IDE Drives and showed the right processor. Then shortly afterwards, I get the error message saying "Disk Boot Failure Insert System Disk and Press Enter"

Can someone help me figure this out? I sure hope it doesn't mean the hard drive is fried! Plz advise thanks

 

[mechBgon]

Specs? The brand & model of both the old and new motherboards might help here, as well as the version of Windows.

Windows generally doesn't take kindly to having the motherboard yanked out from under it, you might need to do a reinstallation after overcoming the boot-device issue.

At a first guess, if it's not booting from a bootable IDE drive, perhaps you've inadvertently plugged the drive's data cable into a RAID controller rather than the motherboard's own native IDE controllers. Specs will help.

 

[Cdubneeddeal]

Like Mech said, format. Probably new chipset.

 

[mangoluvr]

Thanks for replying

the new MB is a Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939 and the old i dont have with me so i dont know, i will be able to find out tonight though when i see my friend. Its got windows xp home and its an athlon 64 bit 3200+ proc, 1 gig ram and western digital 250 gig

I dont think i have it set up as a raid, i checked the manual and have both IDE cables in the right sockets. Would this help if I told him to get the same motherboard as the one that died?

 

[mechBgon]

If you want to try the Gigabyte, then go into its BIOS menu to the Advanced BIOS Features section, then into Hard Disk Boot Priority, and make sure the hard drive is in there. Then set First Boot Device to the CD or DVD drive, and the second one to the hard drive, if it isn't that way already, and see how it goes.

As you mentioned, the hard drive could be toast, too. If it were me, I'd start by putting the hard drive into a healthy, working computer as a second drive and rescue any important stuff off the hard drive. If it doesn't show up in the healthy computer, then that tells you it might've been fried, or at least scrambled by the dead motherboard.

Anyway, if the motherboard is an entirely different chipset family than the old one was, the chances aren't good that Win2000 or WinXP will adopt it. And if they did, WinXP would require reactivation. And if the Windows license is an OEM one, then actually he is supposed to buy a new one at this point anyway, from a legal standpoint.

 

[mangoluvr]

ok i will try booting into the bios and see if anything shows there

 

[mangoluvr]

Here's something interesting. I took out my hard drive and replaced it with my friends hard drive and it recognized it no problem! all the files everyting are intacted. I did not get any error messages at all! Why the heck wont his computer recognize the hard drive. very wierd. Anyways, i gotta get going now and i will be back later on tonight to sort this out. This will give u guys something to think about till i get back. thanks again

 

[mechBgon]

If the WD hard drive has a Parallel ATA interface (standard wide 40-pin connectors), then if the drive is the only drive on the cable, make sure you remove the jumper cap from the pins. That sets it to Single Master, which is different from regular Master. WD drives have this quirk.

 

[Green Man]

If there's a disk in the floppy drive, you'll want to pop that out.

 

[mangoluvr]

mechBgon you are the MAN, I would have never guessed that the little jumper cap was the cause of all this headache. I took it off like u said and voila it worked like nothing happened. Once again thank you for your support

mango