wombatman

I'm upgrading my dad from a P3 900mhz computer to a 2.8C. We bought an Antec case and I put my old D875PBZ Intel motherboard in there with the processor. I also moved his hard drive, DVD drive, and CD-RW drive into it. It starts up fine, everything is powered, and I can get into the bios. Windows, however, will not start. I get a blue screen error.

I'm figuring this is caused by the motherboard change. I have tried using chkdsk /r, fixboot, and fixmbr commands from the Windows bootable CD. Chkdsk does a bunch of stuff (advanced checking/recovery, whatever that entails) and fixboot and fixmbr do their thing. This has not resolved the problem, however.

Formatting the drive is absolutely the last resort, if at all possible.

Any suggestions?

taylorspl

Reinstall. Windows gets pissed when you swap stuff like the processor and MB. There may be another way but reinstalling is the easiest IMO and you get a nice crisp fresh install to enjoy the new equipment with.

cyrnel

It's likely your hardware abstraction layer needs an update. Boot the cd and choose the repair option so the new hardware can be enumerated. You'll have to re-apply hotfixes but your apps & such will be unaffected.

wombatman

If you mean the "Press R for repair", I did that. And all that brings up is a command prompt where I did the chkdsk, fixmbr, and fixboot. If that's not what you're talking, where is that option?

cyrnel

Ah, sorry. That is a confusing part of the boot process.

Just hit enter as if you were doing a normal install. Windows will find existing installs. From there select yours and then hit R. If it doesn't find your install or doesn't show an R option we have more to work on.

wombatman

Alright, this is important. Under the repair option, it's telling me that it's going to upgrade to WinXP (which I have on there already). Is this just the repair part, or will it overwrite all of my dad's data?

cyrnel

That's really the repair/upgrade option.

if you chose an existing install that you know was xp then you're doing the right thing.
Did it show you more than one possible system? If you're at all uncertain, disconnect all drives besides the one with the problem & try again.

The absolute worst you'll do is wipe the existing system. You will not be formatting anything from the repair option.

wombatman

No, there was only one, but I just wanted to make absolutely sure about the wording that was used by the repair option. Thanks.

cyrnel

Let us know how it goes. Remember to resolve your Device Manager entries & do a Windows update. After the update you'll be downgraded to whatever was slipstreamed on your CD.

wombatman

Well, not going so well. While "Registering Components," the CD informs me that it cannot start GETIUMS with MSDART.dll. And it will not do anything besides put up that error message. I've tried replacing the dll file with one that I downloaded, and I still get that error. I really don't know what to do as this is stopping everything from proceeding. I welcome any suggestions.

cyrnel

Sometimes repair isn't able to resolve all problems itself vs. a fresh install. (Which is why you hear that method suggested so often.)

Where did you download msdart.dll? Just in case, www.dll-files.com works.

Did you replace the copy in system32\dllcache (assuming it existed)?

Just so we're on the same page...
On another system copy the downloaded msdart.dll to a floppy, boot the problem box to the recovery console, copy msdart.dll to:
windows\system32
windows\sysem32\dllcache

I'll be around for a while this morning if you haven't already beaten this.

wombatman

Yep, found that on a different site last night. Took some time, but I figured out that the CD would copy files if I told it to do the repair from the CD itself. So I went into the recovery console, copied the file to both places (exactly as you have, incidentally), and then removed the CD, allowing the resumed setup to instead ask for the CD. By doing this, no files were copied over, so the new msdart was written over.

My problem now, however, is that the activate windows box will not come up. I get the prompt as windows is starting up to do the activation (or I can't log in), and I of course click yes. Well, it starts up--hourglass spinning and everything--and then...nothing. Just the standard windows xp grassy knoll background. I am at a lost for what to do now. The repair completed without any problems once I did the copy of the dll. There are no errors showing, no blue screens, no freezes. It just does nothing.

I'd like to thank you for your help, cyrnel, and I hope you can help me clear this last hurdle.

wombatman

Well, scratch that. Apparently the old hard drive is just slow as hell. The activation window is up, and I will be taking care of it in a little bit. I'll put a final update when everything is up and completely working. Thanks again.

cyrnel

i haven't run into that one but I found a couple references to it.

Does it time out and ask again or sit there forever?

This is a longshot but video seems to interfere sometimes. Edit your boot.ini and add /basevideo to the boot line.

For example:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /basevideo

You may have to use attrib if the console fights you changing/replacing the file.

cyrnel

Wombat, let me know if you're making any progress. I'm catching lunch now but will be back shortly. I'm fairly sure we can rescue that install (and the installed apps) but it might mean another go-round or two.