Upgraded PC Start Up

[donsor]

I have an older PC (Asus A7N8X-E) which I upgraded by replacing the following components which I cannibalized from another PC.
Replaced mobo with an Asus M2N32-SLI DeLuxe including its AMD Athlon X2.
Installed a new 1G PC6400 Memory card
Installed the SATA hardrive which contained WINxp Home previously with the M2N32 mobo.
Installed an EVGA GeForce 7950
Replaced the PSU with 430W EATX 24-pin

All others components remained with the case.

Initail power up went smoothly. POST was successful. Reset BIOS in accordance with the User Guide. Both HDs and both optical drives plus the floppy were recognized in the BIOS.

After saving the BIOS settings, the PC asked for the bootable floppy.
I inserted the floppy and the monitor went to A:> prompt.
What do I do next? I thought that because the OS system hardrive was from the same motherboard, that it automatically goes to Windows.
Do I re-install Windows or do I have to do a clean install?

Appreciate any help.

donsor

[Alaron]

Pop in your Windows disc and boot to it. Then select the Repair option. It should rewrite critical Windows files to the drive so it recognizes the new hardware and boots properly.

[donsor]

I decided to do a clean install. I formatted the HD and did an install using the WinXP CD. However, during the setup, at the poiint when it stated that the first portion of the set up has been completed and after it rebooted, it goes back to setup and does the whole loading all over again. Any ideas? By the way although I claimed that the POST was OK, it dawned on me that I don't hear that sngle beep during reboot. Could that mean anything?

[>:() - Tiki Man]

Im pretty sure that your problem is caused by either you booting from the cd a second time by pressing a key, or by there not being any other boot options chosen in your bios. First go to your bios, and find the boot order/setup menu. Once there select for device 1 your cd drive, and for device 2 your hard drive - now next time you are done with part 1 of the windows install, simply wait out the 'press key to boot from cd' prompt, and your system should boot into windows to finish the install.

[donsor]

Did what you suggested however after reboot following completion of the first phase when the message "Press any key to boot from CD" appeared, I waited and then an error message appeared stating "Error loading Operating System"

[aram]

sounds like its not picking up the drive with the install on which is probably a bios setting issue. Try booting with just one HD (the one with the install on). Unplug both the optical and the other HDD.

Check in the bios to see if you have a HDD boot order options (seperate to the boot order). If you do set it to look on the SATA drive first.

[donsor]

Aram:

I think that I have a drive problem. Come to think of it I had problem with this drive (WD 320G) when it worked with an older mobo but not with the newer mobo for some reason. So I'll get me a new SATA drive and install clean. I think my boot setting was correct (CD-ROM, HD) but when the PC tried to reboot after Set Up, it won't pick up on the HD. What do you think?

[aram]

Well the problem is definitely to do with it not being able to boot from that drive, but weather thats a drive or bios issue is difficult to know from here. If you've had problems booting with that drive before then I think its probably safe to assume it's a drive issue, so a new drive should solve the problem

[donsor]

It was the drive afterall. I had another drive (WD Raptor 74G) which I installed by itself, formatted it and did a clean install. No problem whatsoever. Following restart after the first phase, Windows booted right up of the hard drive. I loaded an anti-virus software and connected to the internet. I have two working IDE drives which I will install as additional capacity.

Speaking of the problem drive. It worked well with the A7N8X DeLuxe motherboard but not with the
M2N32SLI. Thanks again for the tips.