HDD Issue, or Is This Normal?

Twinblade · 28 Mar 2007 at 10:41

I have the spec in my sig and last night I took my Sata drive from my old machine and installed it into my new rig.

I took the new HD listed below out, so I only had my old HDD in. Its the exact same model, only difference is it has XP installed on it rather than Vista. However, when I load the machine up, it starts booting and then restarts itself.

I didnt think I had to install anything and it should work fine. Is this a problem because XP is already installed on the HDD and the mobo is recognising this, as the only OS previously used was Vista?

rpstewart · 28 Mar 2007 at 10:49

I think this is a software error rather than a hardware one. The disk you've put in has a version of XP which has all the drivers for the wrong machine so it's probably BSODing with the auto restart option turned on so it looks like it's spontaneously rebooting.

Try booting into safe mode and see if that works.

Twinblade · 28 Mar 2007 at 10:59

I have removed all the motherboard drivers from the HDD. Its basically a clean install of XP Home onto the machine, and then transferred straight to the new rig.

So there shouldnt be any driver issues.

rpstewart · 28 Mar 2007 at 11:11

At what point in the boot sequence does it restart? Do you get as far as the XP loading splash screen with the blue Knight Rider bar?

Twinblade · 28 Mar 2007 at 11:34

Nope. It does it just after the mobo screen passes.

rpstewart · 28 Mar 2007 at 11:39

How are the SATA ports configured in the BIOS of the new and old machines?

Twinblade · 28 Mar 2007 at 12:11

Without looking when I get home I couldnt tell you.

The old machine has a P5B in it, and the new machine a P5N32 SLi Premium. They should surely be the same, as both made by Asus.

rpstewart · 28 Mar 2007 at 13:03

Just because they're both Asus means nothing, the P5B uses the Intel 965P & IHC8 chipset whereas the P5N32 is based on the NVidia nForce 590 chipset. Since the SATA ports are controlled from the main chipset the implementation on both is very different hence the BIOS configuration could be different (in fact the BIOS itself is provided by different companies on each board).