Hard drive error when starting up with new motherboard

[scott123]

here's my problem:

i recently upgraded my motherboard and ram, to my knowledge, i believe i installed all the hardware properly, but once i start my computer up i get this error message:

Inaccessible_boot_device
check for viruses, remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers, check hard drive and make sure its properly configured and terminated. run chkdsk/f to check for hard drive corruption and restart.

now i'm not extremely good with computers, in fact i spent about a month looking for someone who would actually assist me in my upgrade but alas, my motherboard sat inits box for a month until i gave up finding help. anyway, does this error look familiar to anyone else? could anyone possibly help me?

things i can think of that are problems would be:
i don't have the ide cables connected properly
or
gasp, my hard drive somehow died within the 2 hours i spent switching motherboards.

now i have three hard drives, but i'm only hooking the one up that has my os on it, and when i enter the bios it tells me the type of hard drive i have and how it's set up. what could possibly be wrong?

thank you guys so much ahead of time,
scott

[Kov-Ice]

What mobo are you switching from/to? Which OS?

[ror_b211]

Have you overclocked?

And are any of them SATA drives?

[Tin]

when swapping motherboards, its a wise choice to either reformat or do a repair install of your OS. have you tried either of the above?

[scott123]

i'm switching from a tyan trinity 510 socket 478 motherboard to an asus p4p800 se board. i'm running windows 2000 and i wasn't planning on reformatting my harddrive immediately, because for one, the copy of win2000 i have is really sketchy and i wanted to get a real copy of it before i went and reformatted.

no i am not overclocking.

and i'm not sure, what makes sata drives different from regular ata drives? it's a 40gb western digital caviar drive from a couple years ago. the other two hard drives are both at least a year old too.

[glc]

You need to do a repair reinstall of Windows. See my thread in Tips and Tricks on how to move a Win2000 hard drive. There's a lot of stuff in there that you *should* have done before doing the move, but after the fact, the best thing to do is disconnect all hard drives except the main boot/OS drive and disconnect ALL peripherals except keyboard and mouse and do the repair.

[scott123]

ok i read that tutorial....it almost seems like it would just be easier for me to put the old motherboard back in, reformat the harddrive, and then put on the new motherboard...does this sound right to you? because in order to remove all those programs and software i would have to put my old motherboard back in anyway and do only a few steps short of simply reformatting. should i just go ahead and do that? will i run into problems with putting my old mobo in once i have already taken it out/physically uninstalled it? wil my computer just go back to normal?

[Gizmo]

A repair install like glc said should do the trick just fine. But then it depends on what you feel is easier. I'd personally just do a repair install. Reboot with your OS disk in the drive, let it boot from it and do a repair.

[glc]

As I said, disconnect all peripherals and the extra drives and do a repair install.

[scott123]

before i got started with this whole thing i planned to reformat anyway, but i thought it seemed logical to instal the new motherboard first and then reformat instead of vice versa.

[glc]

Nobody said to do it vice versa. A repair reinstall is not a reformat, by the way.

[ramothwalasv]

Hey Mr you have to backup everything that youll need in that hdd and then format your hardrive and start your new motherboard with an empty partitioned hdd. You ll see things are gonna work out.

[scott123]

Originally Posted by glc Nobody said to do it vice versa. A repair reinstall is not a reformat, by the way.

no but i'm saying if i do a repair install i might as well reformat when:

a repair instal involves me putiing my old motherboard back in, uninstalling the hardware, service packs, re-installing and old version of IE and then reinstalling windows and keeping my files...

or i could just put the old mobo back in, save the files i need to a dvd-r which will take 10 minutes, reformat, put in the new mobo and then have a nice clean hard drive that i had planned on doing in the first place.

[glc]

No, it does NOT involve putting the old board back in! I said you *should* have done some preparations, but you don't HAVE to.

You need to do a repair reinstall of Windows. See my thread in Tips and Tricks on how to move a Win2000 hard drive. There's a lot of stuff in there that you *should* have done before doing the move, but after the fact, the best thing to do is disconnect all hard drives except the main boot/OS drive and disconnect ALL peripherals except keyboard and mouse and do the repair.

Give it a try - if you aren't pleased with the results, then you can burn a DVD and reformat.