Boot windows after u/g

[Kratt]

U/g my old P4 system to a Core2 Duo. Plug everything in, PC boots.

Windows fails to load. Get safe mode menu. All safe modes fail. Last known good fails.

Is this normal? Must I reinstall from scratch?

[brutetal]

You can try to do a reinstall without reformat.

[Wojtek]

you upgraded your mobo I suppose, which would explain this.
Yes, when changing lots of hardware, a reinstall is needed to load the correct drivers.

[Kratt]

Argh, things conspire against me getting a working PC.
how many times already I have used nLite...

[Cram]

Yes, you will need to reinstall windows because it gets confused when lots of settings get changed.

[AvailNetworks]

Boot from your XP Setup CD and enter the Recovery Console
Run "Attrib -H -R -S" on the C:\Boot.ini file
Delete the C:\Boot.ini file
Run "Bootcfg /Rebuild"
Run Fixboot


Try that layout above. Whenever you add hardware that is a major upgrade, usually a mainboard, you will need to rebuild the hardware abstraction layer. The steps above will do that.

If you need more information just do a search for "hal rebuild xp" on your favoriate search engine. Or if I find a guide here shortly I will post it here

[Matt8]

The commands I would suggest trying if you are going to follow the above advice is also 'fixmbr' and chkdsk c: /r

Outside of that, yes, you may need to reinstall the OS.

[AvailNetworks]

the fixmbr command I would use with extreme caution and preferably not at all. That will make your partitions not work if you run that command as it rewrites your mbr

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx?mfr=true

it is just a simple HAL problem, the solution is to redo the boot.ini/HAL.dll (as outlined above) or use it as a good opportunity to do a fresh install

[Kratt]

well, I had to reinstall everything anyway.I did a recovery install but it didn't change anything

[Matt8]

the fixmbr command I would use with extreme caution and preferably not at all. That will make your partitions not work if you run that command as it rewrites your mbr

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx?mfr=true

it is just a simple HAL problem, the solution is to redo the boot.ini/HAL.dll (as outlined above) or use it as a good opportunity to do a fresh install

I have used the Fixmbr command close to, crud, probably 300 or 400 times at work and never had it cause a single problem.

[AvailNetworks]

was it on single or multiple partition drives though? Anything over a single partition drive it will trash because it kills all boot records for that device. I've seen it happen and its ugly

[Matt8]

Both, however just ONE os installation. Obviously doing that with any multi-OSs would be a bad call.

[krakjoe]

Windows uses a different driver for different cpus, as far as I'm aware the best you can do is backup your files and settings onto removable media and either repair or reformat the drive, if you manage to repair it theres no reason you won't be able to keep all your files.....

[ced]

re install OS

[m6747]

do a repair not reinstall. XP doesn't get confused lol MS doesn't want you to use ghost to copy xp from one comp to another.

[AvailNetworks]

do a repair not reinstall. XP doesn't get confused lol MS doesn't want you to use ghost to copy xp from one comp to another.

is it me or does this not make any sense at all