I have installed a hard drive with an activated copy of Windows XP Home into a new box (new mobo & cpu, + my old drives) and Windows won't boot. I get the "Windows didn't start properly, start normally, safe mode, etc," screen and it just keeps restarting in an endless loop. Is this caused by installing XP on another comp. and then moving the HD to a new box? I've done it before without having this problem.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
P.S. The Win installation works fine on the comp. it started out on.

Hi and welcome to D-A-L

when you had XP on the old machine you had all the old drivers for the motherboard your new motherboard will have different drivers.


I found this on another forum so can't take the credit


Before you swap out the current motherboard go to device manager and select the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller and select your current storage controller. Right click, select update driver and select install from a list or specific location. Click don't search I will choose the driver to install and select the standard dual channel IDE controller.

This will prevent the inaccessable boot device blue screen. I have done this multiple times on different platforms with no problems.

Also I found that booting the first time with the new motherboard is best done in the Safe mode where XP will install the drivers it needs and at the same time you can install the new motherboard drivers from its CD.

This saved me doing a repair or a reinstall of XP. My whole system came right up and worked great and very stable.

it's a no go. still the same problem. seems to want to start Windows, but just reboots through the same sequence.

have you still got the old mobo?

have you got XP and all the diver discs?

is it a full version of XP or one that came with a machine ie Dell/Compaq

The comp. where the original install took place is here at the moment, but might be going off with its new owner soon. I have the Windows XP disk. No driver disks for the old mobo, though. I have the mobo support CD for the new mobo but it doesn't seem to be bootable. (Thought it should be). It's a full version of Windows XP Home Ed. we're talking about.

what's on the original comp the hard drive came out of?

you may have to do a clean install or put the hard drive in the original comp and remove the drivers like stated.

I was using a Dell that we had lying around to set up the drive with Win while I was building the new box. Thought that I would be able to get the new drivers when I installed the drive in the new box, but the mobo driver disk apparently only runs in Windows and not at boot.
I put the Dell's original hard drive back into it and it's about to be sold to a neighbor. I have other comps around that I could use to change around drivers on the new HD.
Which other drivers might need to be uninstalled on the new HD for it to work on the new mobo?

You can only have the copy of windows running on one machine.

if you've done a clean install on the dell machine and didn't use it you'll be best doing another clean install on the new machine.

This copy is only on the new HD. The Dell had Win. 2000, I believe. I used the Dell box so I could connect to a completed systen to install Windows. I thought I was saving myself some time. lol
Now the original box has been taken away and I don't know if I have another complete computer to test the new HD on.
I tried installing all generic drivers for the hardware interfaces but I'm back to square one.
Can you think of anything I could do besides a new clean install?
Thanks for your help

it will be easier and quicker to format the drive and do a clean install.

how big is the drive your better off partitioning and putting XP on a smaller partition?

I have a 80Gb and it's split into 4 with XP and programmes on a 20Gb partition