Weird problem, Windows won't load after mobo install

[FlyBono24]

I just did a complete motherboard/CPU swap.... from an Athlon to a Core 2 Duo E6400, BFG 680i SLI motherboard, and 2 GB of memory.

I prepped the computer, pre-swap, by backing up all my stuff and uninstalling all the peripherals and drivers.... and uninstalling the drivers for the motherboard peripherals (i.e. LAN ports, RAID drivers, etc)

When I put the new one together and plugged it in, it kept going to the hard drive, it would START to load Windows and then reboot.

Then it started getting weirder... after a few reboots, then the USB ports stopped working!! So I could see the lights on the mouse and keyboard blink for a second when it rebooted, but then went out and were nonfunctional.

I swapped my OLD motherboard back in and reattached everything, and AGAIN the USB ports wouldn't work, and it would reboot in Windows startup.

WTF is going on?

The power supply is a high end Enermax and only a year old... so I don't know if it would be that.

 

[boomerang]

Reset your CMOS.

Boot off your XP CD and do a repair.

Or, you have everything backup up, do a fresh install. I do repairs all the time and am a proponent of it.

That's a major swap you did. I'm not surprised it didn't boot. I think the weirdness you're experiencing is due the rebooting.

 

[sisq0kidd]

Something similar just happened to me. Turns out the hard drive was going bad.

Put it in a another computer and run a quick chkdsk /f

 

[FlyBono24]

I tried to do a repair and it just rebooted halfway through it...

Apparently the USB ports work again this morning, but as soon as Windows loaded and I logged into my account, it said that I needed to re-register Windows... then it rebooted by itself again.

 

[Severian]

likely time for a format and clean install of windows.....if you can't get through a clean install without a BSOD, then it would be time to troubleshoot individual components.

good luck

 

[FlyBono24]

Hard drive - Ran DFT advanced test, showed NO problems
Memory - Ran MemTest86.... came up with THOUSANDS of errors.

The weird thing is I plugged in my old motherboard setup and it was doing the same thing... and I know the memory on that one was fine. WTF?

 

[boomerang]

What version of memtest are you using?

1.65 is the most recent. None of the versions out there are really being kept up anymore.

This could be a Power Supply issue.

 

[btcomm1]

So you changed from a AMD system to a core2 duo system? You have to do a repair install on windows to get it to boot. That is normal that windows would not load up after a swap like that. As far as the USB ports not working, how do you know? After you have done a repair install test the USB ports.

 

[FlyBono24]

Well I've tried to do a Windows reinstall but most of the time it doesn't even make it through the "load" phase of the Windows setup. It either gets hung up on "Kernel debug.dll" or it goes to a BSOD saying that the system has recovered from a serious error and must be restarted.

When I finally got it to start a fresh Windows install, it said there were unrecoverable errors on the hard drive. I had just tested the hard drive with a thorough test and it said it was fine.

 

[FlyBono24]

I was using the newest version of Memtest86+... and it came up with 17000 errors after testing the "good" module.

I can't believe that OCZ would send out 2 bad modules in the same package... wow...

 

[FlyBono24]

Well I got it figured out... but not before formatting my hard drive for no good reason...

What happened is that my memory (OCZ Platinum rev. 2) required exactly 2.0V to work properly, and my motherboard was supplying it 1.85V by default. I had to change the settings to 2.0V per module, and when I rebooted and ran MemTest everything was perfectly fine.