Machine won't boot!!!

fastwunz · 22 Dec 2012 at 17:13

Asus p5k motherboard
E6600 CPU
1 x IDE hard drive
1 x Samsung DVD drive
3 gigs ram
Ati 6450 gpu

Built this from old bits and bobs for dad. New psu, new CPU fan and new DVD drive. All the rest has been reused.

Now, when I power the machine on, it posts, detects the HD and then simply hangs and restarts. I have plugged in a working SATA HD and that posts into windows 7 installed in it perfectly.

The IDE drive is from an older machine but according to the asus website, the board fully supports 1 x IDE drive. On it is installed a fully up to date copy of XP which was working fully in the old machine.

I'm stumped, nothing I have tried will get the IDE drive to boot into windows. Having tested a SATA HD I have made sure it is not an issue with any of the other hardwear which worked perfectly.

Help!!!!

ExRayTed · 22 Dec 2012 at 18:24

Is the windows installation on the IDE drive from a different machine? If so, you'll need to format the drive and install a clean copy. After hard drive detection is when Windows would normally start to boot so odds are that's the problem.

honosuseri · 22 Dec 2012 at 18:44

ExRayTed said:
Is the windows installation on the IDE drive from a different machine? If so, you'll need to format the drive and install a clean copy. After hard drive detection is when Windows would normally start to boot so odds are that's the problem.

+1

A sata HDD will be faster than IDE. Most modern mobos have dropped the IDE connector so it might be wise to adopt sata now. If this rig fails you will have hassle trying to recover the data from the IDE drive.

Something like THIS would give him plenty of storage, unless he fancies a SSD for seriously fast boot times?

fastwunz · 22 Dec 2012 at 19:21

ExRayTed said:
Is the windows installation on the IDE drive from a different machine? If so, you'll need to format the drive and install a clean copy. After hard drive detection is when Windows would normally start to boot so odds are that's the problem.

Yes it's from a different machine- thanks for the advice. Ill format and reinstall

fastwunz · 22 Dec 2012 at 20:37

The whole idea of all this was that dad could spend a bit and get half a system for free from me in return. They only use it for web browsing. Tomorrow ill reinstall xp and tightly cross my fingers. I know my stuff with pc's but until someone told me to reinstall xp I was stumped!! God bless ocuk forums