Asrock motherboard in HP not booting anything

[Jpaz]

Last night I installed an AsrockG43 Full HD motherboard, and couldent get it to boot anything from my hard drive or disk drive. It recognizes both components, but wont boot anything from. I was even able to backup my harddrive onto disks from the disk drive. Im completley stumped on why its not working

 

[Proximon]

Because you don't get to replace the board and reuse the OEM (HP) operating system. You have to install fresh.

 

[Jpaz]

Because you don't get to replace the board and reuse the OEM (HP) operating system. You have to install fresh.

I have a copy of windows XP, but i cant get it to recognize anything coming from my disk drive. Do you know how to fix that?

 

[Proximon]

You have to go into the BIOS and change the boot order, so that the optical drive is the first in the order. Then simply turn on the computer with the disk in the drive.

Provided you have both cables attached to your drive of course

 

[Jpaz]

You have to go into the BIOS and change the boot order, so that the optical drive is the first in the order. Then simply turn on the computer with the disk in the drive.

Provided you have both cables attached to your drive of course

I tried everything possible in the bios. I even tried to boot it with no hard drive and just the CD drive and my boot disc- to no avail. From the looks of it, the problem is in my CD drive.

 

[Proximon]

IDE or SATA?

 

[Jpaz]

SATA

 

[Proximon]

Check with a different bootable disk to make sure it''s not the disk itself.

UltimatebootCD comes to mind as a useful thing to have anyway:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

 

[Jpaz]

Me and my father have been working for the past few hours to see whats going on with it. We have tried 2 boot CDs, neither of which worked with the new MB. We switched MBs with the old one to make sure we didnt mess up the CD drive in the switch, and it all worked fine, BUT, we still couldent boot straight from the CD drive. The most recent progress we've seen is when we switched the CD drive (SATA) with one from an old machine sitting in the closet. Now we got it to boot with the CD drive first, although using the old MB. Could their be compatability errors with the HP framework on the harddrive and the new MB?

 

[Proximon]

The HD itself should be a standard device, but I can't say what HP has done to it beyond that. A complete reformat and partition should be enough to undo anything HP put on it.

 

[o1die]

Your asrock board has 4 or 5 preset configurations in the bios. Try the energy saving one. Also try a different sata port on the board. To format, use your hardrive software; for maxtor, it's called "maxblast", and you can download it free off their website if your hardrive didn't come with it. Western digital also has similar software. To reload windows, you'll need a non hp windows dvd. Some software venders listed on pricewatch sell dell oem dvd's for vista or xp for around $20 or less shipped.

 

[Jpaz]

I tried a hard drive with windows XP(IDE) and still had the same problems getting it to boot. What difference will the power saving mode on the BIOS preset do?

 

[Jpaz]

Is it possible my problem is memory related and not HDD? I have two 1Gig memory modules, DDR2 667. Is it possible wondows is failing due to memory mis-configuration?

 

[Proximon]

You haven't really said what is happening. I've re-read everything and I'm really not seeing enough info. "Won't boot" can mean many things.

Does windows start to load and then lock?

Is there an error message saying no bootable media? Insert a disk drive?

 

[Jpaz]

Heres a full synopsis of what happens when i power up the PC with the new motherboard. Power goes on, i get the ASrock logo screen with an option of boot menue or BIOS setup. When i choose boot menue, i select my harddrive, and it begins to load windows, and immediatley fails, sending me back to the menu. I have an Ultimate Boot CD that i put into my disk drive, and can boot from it, but if i cant boot from my harddrive, what am I to do? The Asrock support page says to download drivers from their website and create a flopy diskette. Me and my father did this, but could not boot anything from the floppy drive(which was recognized by the PC and set to the primary boot device).

 

[Proximon]

So we are back to the original problem. You need to install a fresh operating system. You cannot use old hard drives with operating systems istalled on other motherboards.

By "Install a fresh operating system" I mean this:

You boot from the CD or DVD that has Widows on it and follow the prompts to install the new OS onto the hard drive that is in the computer.

When a Windows OS is installed on a computer, it configures itself for the motherboard it encounters. It does this on a very low level, called the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). When you switch motherboards, sometimes the old HAL config works well enough to boot. However, it's just as likely that the old HAL will lock up.

 

[Jpaz]

When I go to install windows through my ultimate boot CD, the computer gets hung up. Is this because of the HAL?(which i had no idea existed) Or could it be something with the CD drive? I contacted the motherboard manufacturer, and they said it could be a bad board, and to send it back to the retailer(Newegg).

 

[Proximon]

You can't install Windows with the ultimate boot CD. You need a Windows CD to do that.

For example, an XP CD looks like this:
http://www.bablotech.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/windows-xp-sp3.jpg

We're having some confusion here. Perhaps it's what you understand "install" to mean.

 

[Jpaz]

Nononono, i know that i cant just use the ultimate boot, i just use it to set up the install with the seperate windows CD i have. When I change drives to do the switch, it the computer gets hung. Both discs work, i used each one succesfully after a harddrive wipe on an old PC.

 

[Proximon]

I'm trying to see how that would work, but I don't think what you are trying to do is possible.

You have to actually boot from the Windows CD to install it.

If you can boot from the UB CD, but not from the Windows CD, then it follows that the Windows CD is damaged or dirty.

If the Windows CD works fine in another computer, then the problem would either be a faulty CD drive that is unable to handle the small disk errors (In other words a combination of poor CD and poor drive), or just a bad CD drive.

 

[Proximon]

If the CD is fully readable in another machine, you might try to slipstream a disk:

http://lifehacker.com/386526/slipstream-service-pack-3-into-your-windows-xp-installation-cd
This would:
A. Put the OS on a fresh disk
B. Make the OS more compatible with the new hardware
C. Eliminate all the downloads later to update.