Problems booting windows after major hardware change (IDE drives not recognized)

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shuabert

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So here's my dillema. I'm sort of a novice in the hardware department. I've successfully swapped out hard drives and disc drives and transferred my mobo from an old case to a new one before so I recently attempted a more indepth overhaul. Namely, when my old computer died from what was likely a video card or motherboard fail (power still worked but there was no monitor display or POST beep anymore) I decided to swap out the old stuff for new and better parts. 
My PSU and case along with my 250 gb hard drive and my two dvd rom drives are fairly new, so I'm replacing the motherboard (from a nine-year old God knows what to a ASUS P5KPL-AM SE), processor (AMD Athlon64 to an Intel Core2Duo), RAM (PC133 to DDR2), and vid card (my old GeForce 2 for a new PowerColor HD4850). Running XP Home.
The build went successfully from what I can tell, though I'm not entirely certain how to hook up the IDE ribbons correctly when I have two DVD Rom drives since there are only three connectors and I have three drives plus the mobo connector.
Anyway, when I fired it up initially I got nothing. There was power, but I got a POST error (one long beep followed by two short beeps). Since I figured it might be that my old PSU isn't putting out enough power to supply this massive new video card, I removed the card to see what would happen.
Now I get the single long POST beep and a screen recognizing the motherboard and processor. I get as far as the screen that tells me Windows did not shut down properly but no matter what option I choose (safe mode, safe mode w/ command prompt, start windows normally, or last known good config) at this point the system simply restarts again with the single beep and I'm back at square one.
I'm aware of the pitfalls of swapping motherboards while trying to save the OS. I have my hard drive partitioned which means I should be able to keep my files intact despite a complete reinstall, yes? At this point I don't expect to be able to get away without reinstalling windows, but I can't figure out how to get the system to take the install disc so I can even do that. I don't know my way around BIOS very well.
My hope is that if I can get it booted up and running using the system's onboard video then I can worry about replacing the power supply with a higher wattage and installing the new video card at a later date.

My immediate issue is that the BIOS isn't recognizing any of my IDE drives. I have a single DVD writer and a hard drive hooked up on an IDE cable, but the main BIOS page says "Primary IDE Master: Not Detected" "Primary IDE Slave: Not Detected". I've checked everything and it seems to be all hooked up correctly, so I can't figure out why this isn't working. The obvious problem is that since I can't get the drive to function I in turn can't read the Windows install disc so I can't even get in and try to do a repair install or anything.

I can provide more info if you need it, I'm just at a loss right now.
 
you must reinstall windows on the new setup from scratch. Any major hardware changes will require this. Windows configures itself and is registered to the mobo and components. Also windows is licensed for only one system at a time.

A BIOS beep is indicative of hardware failure or incompatibility. Read my guide here: https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic95391.html

To retrieve data you will need to use your drive in another system as an external device. Use a usb to IDE adapter.
 
Tedster's suggestion will produce better results in the long run. You need a complete fix, rather than the rather simple repair.

You CANNOT perform a repair install when the computer is not detecting the drive(s), or in another drive in which it is not the installed drive. Repair install does not work when the drive is attached as an external device in another machine.
 
Thanks for your comments.
Right now the issue is not whether I'll need to do a repair install or a complete clean install. That is moot until I can actually get the motherboard to read the drives I have connected to it. Until then I can't actually do anything with Windows because I can't access the install disc. So my question is why wouldn't it be detecting the drives and how might I do to get them detected (or detectable)?
 
shuabert, have you gone into your bios and hit 'auto detect drive'? its usually in the standard cmos setup, or the like.
 
Test with another hard drive.
Don't accuse just the motherboard. The problem could be as simple as bad cables. There havebeen many reports of bad connecting cables.
 
especially SATA cables poorly designed connectors as far as im concerned, it doesn't take much for them to lose contact.did you run the ribbon cables to make sure they didn't get crimped or cit during install? also did you change PSU's? there will occasionally be a dead HDD power connector. make sure your HDD;s are getting power, you will be able to feel vibration as they spin up, if not,they may not be getting power to them.
just trying to give you all the possible issues i have run into over the years that can keep a HDD from firing up :)
 
Red1776:
In my bios main page where it shows all the drives (in my case where they all say "not detected") I can click on one and it takes me to a page with drive properties (Type, LBA/Large Mode, Block (Multi sector transfer mode), PIO mode, DMA mode, SMART monitoring, and 32 bit data transfer). All of these are set to 'auto' and 32 bit data transfer is set to 'enabled'. Is this what you mean when you say 'auto detect drive' or is there somewhere else I should go.

I did not change PSUs with the changeover, only motherboard, processor, and RAM. (And video card but that's a problem to solve later). What do you mean by 'run the ribbon cables'? As I'll say below, I have three different sets of ribbon cables but none works (even though they were working fine on my old motherboard). I know the disc drive is getting power because I can open and close the tray, and I think the HDD is as well but that's a little harder for me to tell.


Kcircyrd:
I have three different ribbon cables here but none of them is working. The one I have in currently is brand new and shipped with my motherboard so I don't know that cables should be the problem.

There is also a section of my BIOS called 'tools' where I can open something called 'ASUS EZ Flash 2'. The description says 'press enter to run the utility to select and update BIOS. This utility supports: 1. FAT 12/16/32 (r/w), 2. NFTS (read only), 3. CD-Disc (read only).
I don't know what that means, but when I click it it opens the program and says "NO EXISTING DRIVES!"
I don't know if that helps you at all, but I'm just trying to give all the information I can.
 
shuabert, what i meant was in your bios if you do not see the drives, you can scroll down to the IDE position they are installed and hit enter, it will then ask if you want to detect the drive, enter Y and see if it finds it that way. its been a while since i used IDE drives but do you have the jumpers set correctly on your drives?...master/slave/cable select
secondly, the ribbon cables, i meant that you should make sure the ribbon cable you have the drives on has not been damaged, but it sounds as if you have eliminated that.
 
On BIOS have you checked the 'BOOT' menu? Doesn't Boot Device Priority show up? If it does, try setting Primary Boot Device to CD-ROM. Insert a bootable Windows disc in the drive and exit BIOS after saving changes. That should work, provided of course that your CD/DVD drive is detected.
 
That's the problem, though. Neither my hard drive nor my dvd-rom drive is detected despite them both being (as far as I can tell) hooked up correctly.

As far as Red's comment, when I click on the drive position it doesn't ask me if I want to detect the drive, it just takes me to a subscreen with the drive properties (Type, LBA/Large Mode, Block (Multi sector transfer mode), PIO mode, DMA mode, SMART monitoring, and 32 bit data transfer).

Honestly this wasn't where I was expecting to run into problems when I decided to build a computer. Is there a possibility the motherboard itself is broken? It's brand new, though.
 
Hmm...I just switched the drive settings from Cable Select to Master/Slave and it fired up no problem. Apparently in trying to downgrade from three drives to two (this motherboard only has one IDE slot on it and my drives won't take SATA cables) I must have forgotten to try that.

I'll let you know how things go.

EDIT: Hmm...I got to the windows setup screen and after about three minutes it gave me a blue screen of death. It told me to restart the computer and try again and see if it works the second time. I got the same message the second time:

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:
Check to be sure you have adequate disc space. If a driver is identified in the stop message, disable the driver or check with manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing video adapters.
Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use safe mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press f8 to select advanced startup options, and then select safe mode.
Technical information: ***STOP: 0x0000007E (0xc0000005, 0xF748E0BF, 0xF78DA208, 0xF78D9F08)***
pci.sys - Address F74E0BF base at F7487000, DateStamp 3b7d855c


The part about adequate disc space rings a bell as my C:/ partition (where I had windows installed before) was running low before my computer died. But I don't know how to fix that now; is there a way to wipe the C:/ drive before I try to install Windows? Right now I just started the disc with the old OS still in place.
 
Grr..well I've had no luck finding the key and I went ahead and did a reinstall using a slipstreamed disc with SP2 which got me past the boot error. Unfortunately I can only get as far as the part where you have to enter the product key. I tried some tricks online that were supposed to show you the key written in the disc itself, but so far no luck with that. Does anyone know if you can get the key from the actual cd? There is no previous install anymore to try to get it from so if not I'm pretty much hooped. Can one call MSoft to get the key?
 
The product key should have been on a Microsoft sticker on your old PC case. When you installed your old motherboard into the new case you should have saved the number. Did you discard your old case?
 
Unfortunately the sticker was never put on the case. It was attached to the plastic sleeve the cd came in, which has gone missing. I've looked everywhere but it must have been thrown out by someone else in my house.
 
In that case as far as I know, you will have to buy another copy of Windows to get a legitimate product key.
 
Microsoft saw you coming. there are probably a zillion people who wanted to discover another way of locating the install key. Microsoft has done it through code in multiple locations and part of the 20 digit product ID tells were the other parts are located. Each digit has a meaning.
Some people have actually figgered out the algorithms for the key, once known, but if they have found a way to locate it on a CD, they are keeping mum.
 
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