Changed Mobo & now cant get into Windows

I have a 10k RPM 36 GB Primary Hard drive (C which is almost full and a new 250 GB hard drive as the secondary drive which is empty. Both are SATA.

Recently, my motherboard died and so I gave the PC in for repair. I provided a new motherboard.
My old motherboard was a Gigabyte 8KNXP and my new one is an Asus PC4800-E Deluxe.

The man at the repair shop told me that I would need to re-install Windows XP Pro coz I have now changed motherboards.
If I do that, I will lose all my data which I haven't backed up. He suggested I install Win XP PRO on the 2nd Hard drive and use that as my primary drive. I don't want to do that coz the 1st drive is 10K RPM and I wish to use that as my Primary drive.

Got my computer back today and there is a whole host of problems.
I have WIN XP PRO.

First of all I entered the BIOS and went through everything. Its an AI BIOS.
It says:
Primary Master IDE Drive = My CD Drive
Secondary Master IDE Drive = My DVD Drive
Third IDE Drive = my 250 GB (2nd) SATA Hard Drive
Fourth IDE Drive = my 36 GB 10k RPM Raptor.
(is this how it should be)?

I have connected both the HDD through the onboard sata connection.

So why arn't the settings detecting my Hard Drives? In fact, when it's booting up, it says "Detecting ......." and then says "No Drive Found" and "Bios not installed ".

Do I need to install a SATA Controller software first? If this is the case, I know I should go through the WIn XP CD Bootup and press F6 to install 3rd Party SCSI or RAID drivers (even though I'm not using either of those) and then let it know that I will provide a driver. However, it asks for the driver on floppy and I don't have that on floppy. So is there any way around that? Anyway, I think the driver should be installed once I'm inside Windows.

I tried the repair option through the XP CD and after it went through the process and rebooted, (still no drive found of course), it showed me the WIndows Logo and then just before getting to the Login screen, a blue screen of death came up showing "Page Fault in Non Paged Area ". I had to restart and I went throiugh the repair several times but always ended up with the same message.
I did take out all the PCI cards. I don't think the memory is defective coz I used it fine with my old motherboard (unless its blown, but I doubt that).

Another thing I tried was to go and install a fresh copy of Win Xp but it wouldn't let me do that over the old one. It wanted to make a new copy on the same drive but there wasn't enough memory left - so I left that alone.

I also went to the option of installing a fresh XP on my 2nd Hard Drive but it wanted me to delete that entire partition. I thought I'd leave it alone just in case I messed that up.

Does anyone have any information which can help me get back into Windows.

Appreciate the help,
Thanks

 

No Device Found (talking about SATA Hard Disk)

OK,

I got the drivers on floppy and there are 2 versions:
1) WinXP Promise FastTrak 376/378 (tm) Controller
2) WinXP Promise SATA378 (tm) Controller
Which one should I use?

During XP CD Boot, I used F6 and installed both of these (one at a time on different occasions) and then continued for a repair option. After going thru the process, and boot up, same problem appeared: Blue Screen and "Page Fault in Non Paged Area ".

However, on the first couple of attempts, when I went to do the repair, it could not find a Hard Disk Drive. This leads me to believe that the root of all the problems is that the DISK can't be found in the first place, which is leading to all the other problems. On every boot, I get the message "Detecting ......." and then says "No Drive Found" and "Bios not installed ".

So I went into the BIOS to see what I could discover. This is how it looks:

MAIN

Primary IDE Master = CD Drive
Primary IDE Slave = Not Detected
Secondary IDE Master = DVD Drive
Secondary IDE Slave = Not Detected
Third IDE Master = My 36 GB Raptor Drive (which was originally used as the C main drive before previous mobo blew)
Fourth IDE Master = My new 250 GB Drive (which is empty)
IDE Configuration
Onboard IDE Operate Mode [Enhanced_Mode] (Enhanced mode is for Win XP)
Enhanced Mode Support On [SATA] (other choices = SATA + PATA or PATA)
Configure SATA as Raid [No] (If I change this to YES, then the next option will come up)
Serial ATA as Bootrom [Enable or Disable]
IDE Detect Timeout [35 Seconds]

Under the ADVANCED tab
Onboard Devices Configuration
Onboard Promise Controller [Enabled] (since this is enabled, the option below is also there)
Operating Mode [IDE} (the other option is "RAID" but I did not choose that as I dont want Raid)

What I don't get is, should my SATA Drives (which are both plugged into the SATA connectors on the motherboard) be seen as IDE?
Secondly, how do I get the mobo to actually find and use my SATA drive and make that the primary means of booting off. I have already set it as the 1st Boot up device but it always comes up with "No Drive Found" and "Bios not installed ".
Thirdly, if Bios is not installed, what was I doing there in the first place?
Fourthly, I also have the BIOS update file called AFUDOS.exe and P4CED18.ROM on diskette but I don't know how to use that to update the Bios coz I can't even get into DOS.

If I can just get the computer to find my SATA Drives, then I'm sure there would be no problem.

Appreciate any help I can get on this,
Thanks
JH

 

Greetings

Firstly it is normal to see what you are seeing in the BIOS as far as your drives are concerned. Primary and Secondary IDE drives are only the ATA drives in your PC, like your CD and older hard drives, and not the SATA drive you have. You will find if you dig around in your BIOS the boot sequence, which if you want to setup Windows again should be CD, then the SATA drive. Then maybe floppy etc.

You DO NOT have to install SATA drivers to install windows, unless you are using the SATA in a RAID configuration, which not all SATA motherboards support anyway, and it doesnt sound like you are using them that way.

You should insert the Windows XP CD in the drive, and boot into setup from the CD. Sounds like you managed that so far so i wont elaborate abotu installing Windows too much.

You will get an option along the way to repair the windows installation listed, which you should do. Dont confuse this with another option you may see Repair using the Recovery / Repair console. Thats for something else, like restoring corrupt system files.

90% of the time a "repair" install of Windows after a motherboard change is all you need to do, and your Windows will stay as it was and programs will all work. Of course you have to install the new motherboard drivers in Windows once it is repaired.

If a repair install does not work, read on. If it did you dont need to read any further. Info past this point is only relevant if a repair fails!

If a repair fails, do a new complete install of Windows into the same location as the original Windows, deleting the previous Windows installation. When asked about formatting options, choose to leave file system intact. Do not format the drive.

Before you get scared about wiping Windows, with regards to your data, note that if you install Windows over the top of itelf, it will retain your old folder structure and data. You will find a profile folder containing your old data like email, address book, desktop, my docs, under c:\Documents and Settings. It wont be an active profile but the data will still be there and can be restored to your active profile.

You will find folders in Documents and Settings with names like All Users.Windows and Administrator.Windows. They are your newest profiles, the old ones will be named as they were before (without the .windows extension) and be inactive.

Ask how to restore certain data like OE email boxes, favourites, address book to an active profile from the old one, if you need that help.

If you had moved your My Documents folder or created other data folders on C, they are still there also.

All folders that were on your PC before will still be as they were, just any that are programs you had installed will not be working without re-installing the software. Just re-install all your old software over the old disconnected copies. Then download/run/install any updates you have or can get for any programs you have, and windows (maybe via Windows Update). Also update your antivirus/firewall definitions.


The only folders and files that are totally removed are those under the c:\Windows directory, which is deleted by setup. In Windows 2000 and XP very little or no data lives under that folder anyway, due to the introduction of the c:\Documents and Settings folders.

For further help, ask. Hope this helps.

 

Thanks a lot Dez,

I think I went to this area before where I asked for a fresh installation as I was also planning on overwriting the old one but when the screen came up with my hard drive listed, I chose it but it suggested that it would make another installation of windows on the same drive and that this was not recommended.

How do I get to the section of overwriting the old installation?

Thanks

 

I've just been told that I may need the Intel Application Accelerator RAID Driver even tho I'm not implementing Raid.

Is this the reason why the HDD cant be found?

I'd rather load this driver up first before installing a fresh copy of Windows just in case a repair may work after setting up this driver.