890GXM-G65 and old hard drive

[Ar-el-es]

I just got in all of the parts I ordered in order to upgrade or rather build a newer faster PC. I was on a budget and still wanted a good gaming rig so I got this combo,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.472937

I'll eventually build a real gaming rig soon but this will at least allow me to play Star Trek Online and World of Warcraft especially once I get a video card soon. The onboard video card will be good enough for a few weeks with the graphics turned down a bit.

My problem right now though is that I can only boot up the PC in safe mode. I didn't have cash for a new hard drive or a full copy of XP, Vista, or 7. I thought I had brought with me a full copy of XP 32-bit when I moved out of my ex girlfreind's place in NC, (I'm in TX now) but instead I left the full copy and apparently brought with me an upgrade copy. I only have a full copy of 98 and without a dish with FDISK on it I don't think that'll help me much. Maybe I can download a copy of FDISK and make a CD but I haven't gotten that far yet and I don't want to lose what is on the hard drive.

So basically I have an IDE hard drive from an old Gateway and a old IDE DVD-RAM drive I had laying around the house inside this new PC of mine. I can at least get online and type this question but I cannot get the DVD that came with the motherboard to work. I was still able to install the drivers for the slightly more important parts but not the onboard video card, onboard sound card, and the USB controller. I'm sure it could have something to do with the drivers from the previous configuration but I cannot figure out how to remove the old drivers.

When I try to run the DVD I get the message, "Failed to load Hardware Montior Driver!". I get similar messages when I try to install the drivers for the things not yet installed. Coming from a 2.2ghz Pentium 4 it's really hard to tell if this PC is any faster. I'm sure it'll run better after I get out of safe mode and install the other RAM chip. I'm only using one because the instructions said to start off with one. I highly doubt throwing in the 2nd chip will fix this.

Please, if anybody has any idea what I can try, let me know!

 

[Ar-el-es]

I forgot to mention that I tried to ask this question at the MSI forum but there is something wrong with the forum. It says that an activation email was sent successfully but at the same time it says that an error has occured. I've tried multiple times but I have yet to receive that email and there seems to be no way to contact anybody at the forum. I'm hoping that maybe someone who is registered at both forum and the MSI forum will see my topic and relay the message to the guys there. They just had a server die on them and it's understandable that there are still a few glitches but this one may not be noticable to them since it only affects newcomers.

Anyway, I did install the 2nd RAM chip and it increased the speed of the PC but that's all. I guess what I'll try to do now is see if I can use my parent's PC to burn a copy of a Windows 98 startup disk onto a CD and use that to start over on another old IDE hard drive. I hate doing it this way but it looks like my only choice until I can get a full copy of 7 off of EBay.

 

[Ar-el-es]

I tried using this PC to start over with my even older hard drive but without a floppy drive or a way to hook up another IDE CD-ROM drive it's rather impossible. I even tried to use my old PC to at least copy over the installation files over to the hard drive and then finish the installation on the new PC but then I got an error message about not enough memory. I can't even just use the old PC to install Win98 from start to finish. Well, I did get it to install but it too would only start in safe mode and for some reason it can't see the CD-ROM drive. Unless somebody here can chime in with a way to fix this copy of XP I'll just have to wait a week or 2 when I finally have a new hard drive and full copy 64-bit copy of something.

 

[Ar-el-es]

Okay here's another slight improvement. I managed to install the driver for the onboard video card but windows can still only boot in safe mode. There were actually 2 different audio drivers and I was able to install one of them.

The MSI forum is still screwed up!!! The MSI technical support is also screwed up with broken links.

I'm also starting to think that this forum isn't any good for looking for answers for technical issues. Now on the other hand if I needed help to choose a motherboard I would have already gotten several replies.

 

[Ar-el-es]

Nevermind, since I still needed to put this hard drive back into the Gateway so that I can sell it for a few bucks I should just let it be. The last thing I want to do is undo the changes that could make it work in my new system just to prevent having the same problem putting it back into the old system. It would've been nice to know what to do just so that someone else who's having the same problem could possibly benefit from this topic. Then again maybe I'll come across this problem again but after I get a full copy of Windows Vista/XP this shouldn't be an issue.