New System won't boot properly

[yodogs5]

Hey everyone, I am pretty new to building computers, I just built my first today and am having some problems. Everything in the PC is new except for the hard drive, this is because it already has Windows XP installed on it. When I try booting up the PC normally I get a blue screen that has a stop message saying "STOP: 0X0000007E" (That's not the whole thing, just the beginning). I am able to go into safe mode, but there is not much I can do from there.

THINGS I'VE TRIED:

Putting in a reinstall disk, which apparently was not the right one (Can't seem to find the one I need).

Put Ubuntu, a free OS, on a disk and brought it over to the computer but in safe mode the CD would not boot.

Put Ubuntu on a flash drive but it would not be read.

I suspect it could be the hard drive because it is IDE, or the drivers (the blue screen says to check drivers) that I have not been able to install due to safe mode

 

[Goro]

Can you post to bios? If you can make sure that you set your CDdrive as first booting device, restart your pc with Win Cd in it and see how that goes.

You have format the hard drive when you boot up from the Win Cd.

List all the parts you have installed so we can review them and see what you have connected.

 

[Goro]

you have to format the hard drive, sorry about the typo.

 

[yodogs5]

I already set the CD drive as the first booting device, as I said above I do not have the right windows cd that was used on this hard drive

AMD Athlon 64 x2 5600 2.9GHz

Gigabyte M61PME-S2P

Kingston 2GB DDR2 1066

MSI 9800GT

Western Digital 40GB (I know) HDD (from my old dell)

 

[Goro]

The hardware looks ok.

The cd should not matter as long as it is a boot cd. Is your CD IDE? If it is check your jumper settings on the CD and HDD.

If you manage to boot from the cd format your HDD. Let me know what happens.

 

[yodogs5]

I switched the jumpers on the HDD to master because originally it wasn't working the bios says the optical drive is slave, and it won't matter even if the current version on the HDD is SP2 and the disc I have (Its a reinstall disc from another PC) is SP1?

 

[Goro]

No, it won't matter since you are doing a clean install you have to format the HDD once the cd boots. Then once you install you can dl SP2 and SP3 for XP. Try playing with the jumpers and set them to cable select on the HDD.

 

[yodogs5]

Alright ill go give it a try

Edit: Thanks for the help man, it now works!

 

[Goro]

 

[yodogs5]

Ok well now i got another problem, when i installed the video drivers and utilities i then tried to install the motherboards drivers, every time something would install it would reboot the PC. When it rebooted the first time it made all the colors disoriented. The system continued to re install all of the motherboards drivers but it was on the last one and the program seems to lock up, I can use the start menu but when clicking something such as "My Computer" it freezes the start menu and after a few minutes says "windows cannot find '\(null)' make sure you typed the name correctly and then try again, to search for a file click the start button"

Also ever since it has restarted non of my icons for the desktop are coming up (IE and recycling bin) and it changed my background to the default (the video Utilites came with a free background) I can not interact with the desktop at all EX-right click.

 

[daship]

You need to do a reinstall of windows and you cant use a Dell or similar disk.

You need a retail or regular OEM disk to do a clean install.

I recommend Windows 7 direct from MS if you dont hae cash for a OS at this time.

Win 7 is free to try til june 2010.

 

[yodogs5]

What Goro said worked, but when i installed the video drivers it messed everything up. I have no clue where to go from here.

 

[yodogs5]

I just uninstalled the drivers labled Nvidia Drivers. and it now works, i just need to figure out how to get the drivers on with out it doing that.

 

[jitpublisher]

Motherboard/chipset, sound, lan drivers first. Video card last.

 

[yodogs5]

I had to reformat windows again and was able to install the other drivers perfectly fine, but now I can't get the video card drivers to work, the installation page won't open. It launches the .exe, but won't open the page (I went to task manager and looked at processes). I don't think it is scratched because I have two of the same driver discs for it, and now I can't even turn off the computer from Windows.

 

[Goro]

The dell cd most likely has the drivers for the other hardware from your old computer. Go to each of the manufactures web site and dl the latest drivers. I would also upgrade to SP2 or SP3 before installing video driver because there is a chance that the new drivers will not work with SP1. Also, another issue you might have is activating windows because of previous activation and since that copy of windows (the key) was bought by dell.

 

[yodogs5]

Thanks for all the help, installing the mobo drivers allowed me to use the internet and get the drivers from the nvidia site.