I made my first attempt to upgrade my motherboard yesterday. After the installation I configured the BIOS and attempted to run windows XP pro. The system seems to get through POST ok but when it attempts to launch the OS the system reboots. It will not boot in safe mode either. I have attempted to repair windows with the CD but have run into difficulties as it asks for an administrator password that I do not know. Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing the problem, or how to get the password? I have now reinstalled my old Mobo. Do I need to make a bootable floppy If so could some one please advise me how to do this.
Its a XFX Mach4 KT600 mobo
512 RAM
Sapphire 9800 pro
Athlon 3000+xp

Just a guess given the symptoms, but I'd be pointing and hissing at your memory.

What sort exactly is it and are you sure its compatible with your new motherboard?

Check out http://www.xfxforce.com/mb/products.php

You will have to re-install or repair install xp after changing boards.
The following links have good info on this. As to the password, hmm...
There shouldn't be a password unless you set one. If one was never set then hitting "enter" should pass. Anyway last link is a google search.

ps. Are you booting from your xp CD? Other details? I am confused when you say the system reboots after bios post; but then you say you attempt repair & password problem


Changing a Motherboard or Moving a Hard Drive with XP Installed


How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP


google admin password

The system reboots after post after the first couple of times I changed the boot sequence in the bios to boot from cd. I never thaught of just hitting enter, I assumed there must have been a password as it was prompting me for one. I was just going to do a clean install and in preperation i have backed up all my files. Unfortunately this amounts to 1.4gb I have saved this to the hard drive but can not save it to cd as they only hold 700mb. is there any way of splitting the backup over a couple of disks?

i see third party products that do that, for a price. i always wondered if one could use a dvd for "plain" data? assuming one had a dvd/cd/rw.

otherwise i would think you could break-up your backup. make one disk for system state. and other disks for selected programs?

When you say you've backed up all your files, do you mean that you've copied the contents of your C:\ drive onto another partition or have you made an "image" of your C:\ drive with a utility such as Norton Ghost? Have you ended up with just one compressed file?

I didnt know there was various types of back up. It was just a backup using the wizard that automatically comes up in windows xp pro. I have just saved the backup onto the c: drive its just one file, but its too big to transfer to any removeable media. I have a cdrw but the disks only hold 700mb and the backup is 1.4gb. when i try to save it to disk a message comes up saying not enough space on the disk.

in the wizard you can choose to back up the system state only.

& also you can choose to back up selected files.

thus i would think that you could "breakup" the backup.

you can also use this tool (30 day trial):

http://www.zip-backup.com/