XP bluescreen on boot

[Justin]

OK. For reasons I can't really go into, my girlfriend *has* to have XP installed on a different computer, then moved to hers. I install XP normally, then afer a fresh install I move it over. As I expected, I get a BSOD on boot, because of XP being extremely picky about what chipset you're using.

The specs of either machine are:

Installed on:
768mb RAM
1100mhz slot 1 P3
ABIT BH6

Moved to:
256mb RAM
1000mhz AMD Thunderbird
Not sure of the motherboard

Anyways, I heard that it is possible to trash your hardware/driver config from the recovery console, so that XP will reinstall the drivers on next boot.

How do I do this, and would I need the XP CD with me at the time?

Thanks a ton.

 

[Didou]

You can find suggestions for such a thing right here -> Neverending restarts...

 

[Rick]

Originally posted by Soul Harvester
Anyways, I heard that it is possible to trash your hardware/driver config from the recovery console, so that XP will reinstall the drivers on next boot.

How do I do this, and would I need the XP CD with me at the time?

Thanks a ton.

Just recently, I made a post concerning this. You should find the answer as to how to trash your hardware profile in the link above. Here's my post that deals with this:

Posted by: Rick

Just a long shot, but if you boot from the Windows 2000 CD (Or floppy disk installation set), you can access your "Recovery Console" by choosing the "Repair" option during Windows 2000 pre-installation.

A Windows XP installation disk(s)/disc should also work, I would imagine.

In the recovery console, you can access your hard disk for the old computer. What you will want to do is delete a file called "driver.cab" which will basically reset your hardware configuration data.

You'll find this in C:\WINNT\Driver Cache\i386\Driver.cab

This will cause Windows 2000 to literally boot without any drivers (including chipset.. etc), and then Plug 'n Pray will take over upon Windows boot/logon... In theory, allowing you to proceed to the operating system at the very least. From here, it should finish re-installing all of your hardware automatically.

Please take into consideration how long this will take, so you will have to wait a bit for Windows 2000 to finish booting and logging on to the desktop... Just a warning so you don't get frustrated and reset it.

If this rebooting is caused by Windows 2000 expecting certain devices that aren't there anymore (Because you copied/relocated another W2k installation to this computer) , then this should theoretically fix it.

This problem was dealing with random XP rebooting (possibly due to drivers), but for your situation, it may also work. Chances are though, since it didn't do it right the first time, it probably won't work the second time. Your settings may be incorrect or god knows what else.

I have to ask - What problems are experiencing? I realize it is blue screening, but what is the error message? Also, when does it blue screen?

The BH6 is from the BX board era.. So I am guessing it is a BX chipset, which Windows XP handles fine (from my experiences). But you may want to take the following steps to ensure your computer is up to par..

1.) Flash the BIOS with the newest one. I remember the BH6 having ACPI problems under Windows 2000 (Could be causing this!), but there was a BIOS update that would fix this. This is most likely the cause, since Windows 2000 and XP are closely related.

2.) Turn off BIOS shadowing and virus protection.

3.) Disconnect any drives on an add-on

 

[Justin]

Both mobos are configured properly and have the latest BIOS.

I wasn't able to get the exact error message, but it bluescreens immeditaly after selecting XP to boot with, whether or not you choose safe mode. I even went so far as to install 2 copies to ensure that one of them would be fine. The install itself is *perfect*, XP doesn't want to change it seems.

So deleting driver.cab may work you say? I will certainly give that a try. Thanks.