Motherboard or OS problems?

[Zdiviny]

About a month ago I fried the MSI motherboard that came with my PC bundle. I bought a new one from Computer Builders Warehouse, and they installed everything for me, but said that I had to repair or re install windows myself.

Well, I went home to do that, and the PC starts up fine, and then I click f10 to do a system restore, and it gives me the options of doing quick format, no format, or system recovery. However, no matter what option I choose it does the same things. It say recovery or restore successful, and that it will restart into user partition. Computer boots up, gets ready to load windows, and restarts. When it boots back up, it says window did not start successfully, and gives me a options of what to do. Wether I click Safe mode, last working configuration, or start windows normally, they all just restart my computer and give me the same message again.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[tweaks_sav]

Did they replace it with the exact model of your old mobo?

 

[Zdiviny]

No, but they assured me it would work, and since they didn't price gouge me on it, I'm fairly certain they are compatible.

 

[tweaks_sav]

Well, the system restore proccess is for a specific driver/hardware set. If it is different, then windows is now trying to load drivers from your previous Motherboard.
You need an OEM/Retail XP CD. Not an image of the OS.

 

[Zdiviny]

So if I buy a fresh copy of Windows XP it will install normally?

 

[foozy]

It should, but you don't necessarily need to buy a copy - any XP cd will work as long as you have your old key still.

Are you just trying to reformat? It makes it a lot easier if you're not trying to save data at the same time.

 

[Zdiviny]

I don't care about any of the data at all, it's really just a World of Warcraft and occasional homework machine.

 

[jbaines2615]

In that case a clean install of windows is the best option. You can get a copy of windows from torrents (aseurus, utorrent) but I think you can also get it from the microsoft website, which if thats right would obveously be the best option. Watch out for cracked copies as they wont give you the chance to enter your own CD Key, then you wont be able to get certain updates such as media player 11 or IE 7 etc.

You'll just have to burn the disk from an image (.ISO file) which can be done with nero or most other burning programs. Then go into the bios and set the first boot device to CD/DVD rom drive. Put the disk in, hit save and exit and there u go.

 

[tweaks_sav]

Make sure you get an OEM version of windows. That way your key will work. Not retail or corporate.

 

[Zdiviny]

Thanks guys! Clean install worked great. One question though. Whenever my computer boots now, I have to check which operating system I want. No big deal really, but is there anyway I can delete the one from the list?

 

[tweaks_sav]

To fix that, goto:
Right Click on My Computer -> Properties
Goto the Advanced Tab -> Settings (under Startup and Recovery)
Click Edit
Then remove the bottom line completely.
File -> Save
Click Ok on the rest.