XP New Motherboard PC Crashes - won't boot

[MartinImber]

My PC Crashed on Friday today they fitted a new motherboard but the PC will not boot up - it wants a reinstall.!!!

I have unreplaceable pictures and ISO files on C: I don't want to lose - any ideas please?

[KraGorn]

Restore from a backup.

Sorry, but really if they are irreplaceable why haven't you got a backup copy, what happens when the disk dies as they do from time to time? :o

I presume the new mobo is not the same model as the old one, this means XP's low-level chipset drivers can't initialise the board and hence XP can't boot. In theory you could re-install and overwrite the current Windows tree while at the same time preserving your files, in practice I personally have never tried it.

For complete safety, in the absence of any backup, I'd get a new disk, install on to that and then copy the files you need off the old one. This of course presumes you have a full XP install CD and not one of the crass 'recovery CDs' one gets with new machines these days.

If you've a CD/DVD burner and some DOS-based software you may be able to save the files to optical media.

[mrtonywade]

what Os are you running??? you should be able to reinstall windows without lossing anything, if not your have to boot from floppy into dos and recover your files manually

or as KraGorn says
above. with a new hard drive, unless you already have a d: drive
partiotion on your current drive, in which case you could do a new install on that drive
good luck

[mrtonywade]

Originally posted by MartinImber
My PC Crashed on Friday today they fitted a new motherboard but the PC will not boot up - it wants a reinstall.!!!

I have unreplaceable pictures and ISO files on C: I don't want to lose - any ideas please?

back up your hard drive often

[MartinImber]

Firstly I can't burn as RAM only as VIDEO

Secondly I didn't get round to it as my wife downloads and I backup

I am being lent another 80GB drive to reinstall!

[MartinImber]

At least I know why they want to "Kill Bill" - annoyed XP owners!!!

[CodeThief]

Come on, you can't blame that on XP, if the motherboard has been changed you can't expect it to boot up!

Dave

[vulkan75]

I've reinstalled xp on a hard disc using the "keep current file settings intact no changes" option and had no probs accessing my saved data..

[bccsl]

If you really need to resurect a dead installation, this is how you do it:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...roduct=win2000
You need to use the recovery console section, this article describes Windows 2000 but the process is the same for XP. I would try copying in the standard HAL file, this usually works then once you've backed your files of it's best to rebuild.

[KraGorn]

Originally posted by CodeThief
Come on, you can't blame that on XP, if the motherboard has been changed you can't expect it to boot up!

Linux most likely would.

[owain_thomas]

If you (or someone yo know) has another PC why not stick the HD in that for half an hour and copy all the files you need to that, then you can simply reformat and reinstall on your original machine.

Regards,
Owain

[pringtef]

If you've got another PC available, with burner available, then you could always use this :-

Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD

VERY handy disc to have at any time!!

[Daftboy]

I had exactly the same problem when I changed motherboards. Turned out after re-formatting and re-installing didn't work that they had released a new BIOS. Downloaded and flashed the BIOS, system worked a treat. Only problem was that I had lost all my data. Oh well.

BTW - The MB was an ASUS Deuluxe which was the best.

[MartinImber]

Anyway I managed to copy all my files to a spare drive, then reset the original and booted off the CD.

After an hour of reinstalling I had Windows again but only insafe mode - I had to remove local user RUN stuff.

Just got to sort out the sound card now!

Thanks everyone