Amy

We just put in a new motherboard, cpu, memory, with same everything else. XP will not load, repair, boot, anything. It freezes up when it starts and the loading bar starts running, freezes up. Tried every single option you can get where you choose what action to take. No avail. Will flash the WinXP load screen, then flash a blue screen, and computer restarts. Can't read the blue screen, managed to see something about "restart your computer..." and we cannot pause it either. The new hardware is as follows: MSI K8N Neo3 AMD Sempron 64 3100+ Kingston 1G DIMM All the mobo settings we've checked a million times, video works, can get into the BIOS, no luck there. Okay, I read that you have to reinstall XP when you change the mobo but it will not install, repair, nothing, just freezes. if we get to a DOS prompt, it freezes pretty quickly, doesn't let us get through to make any commands. I also read that you can make a change in the device manager BEFORE changing the board, changing to "standard dual channel PCI IDE controller", then "don't search, i will choose the driver to install", then "standard.....controller". what i don't know is if we're stuck putting the other hardware BACK in to try this. husband is a power user, much experience, can follow complex instructions as you can give, technical explanations. so lay 'em on me if you can. we absolutely cannot reformat these drives, the information is way too important. also have two external DVD combos, two internal CD's, two hard drives. i took the board back out today, to check to see if there was any visible damage, any contact with the case perhaps. i found that one of the little red washers had come off one of the case screws and i didn't know it, so there was some contact with the case screw on the top left, by the keyboard/mouse plugs. i've seen this happen before and this was not the effect, so i suspect that was not the problem. please help, i'm supposed to gather research while he's passed out. :-) Amy

if you want to see which direction we've done to get as far as we have, see this link: http://65.24.134.81/KipSolutions/MovingXPNewMotherboard/MovingXP.htm so far so hellish anyway. what a hassle. amy

another update Relic, we have managed to get XP set up, with my husband manually going through directory freedom and loading the original program over from D to set up. but the video is elusive still. it will load and all you see is black screen with white mouse pointer. any advice for me? i am going through the archives and doing more research. husband is quite skilled, i'm amazed he's gotten this far. we should have the process down pretty good by the time we get done with this machine, so we can upgrade other people's mobo's who have XP also. quite a task. amy

Well, update. We've gotten XP to get to within 2 minutes of finishing setup now, before freezing. We're on our way. I will stop bugging you, but look back and see if you have any suggestions at all. Then when we get to the end, I'll letcha know what we did. Amy

sorry, i meant to say "The manifest file contains one or more syntax errors."

He can get into the C drive and all that, but nothing works. message from hubs) amy

Hey Relic, I just did passing-out for 5 hours, and am trying to catch up to where hubs is at. We did the CMOS thing of course, didn't work. Couple days ago. The CPU pins were not bent, but it didn't help us. Changing out the hard drive cables got us farther though. We're not going from an Intel, but from another AMD, KM2M Combo mobo. Last night we did put the other hardware back on for while to go take a look at the drives and make some disks, hubs had some ideas. He's gotten it to stop freezing up so much and I see XP getting farther into install, but we get to the "new and exciting look" screen and an error popup comes up "(blah blah blah).....The manifest file contains one or more errors." Any more ideas, since we can get this far now?

okay, i reseated the CPU also now. no avail. however, it came out a little to easily, came out with the heat sink, did not seem to be seated properly. I've never seen a CPU come out without lifting the lever. however, when we tried to do clean install prior to this, the drive letters changed, and now the hard drives are not being detected, and we're having to go into the BIOS every restart to detect them. sheesh. amy

just to be clear, hardware ID's fine during intial boot process, memory tests fine, the hard drives are listed in the same order as they should be, sees the cdroms and dvd combos, the BIOS works fine, but we cannot even do a clean install away from the primary drive even, just tried that also. it doesn't behave like a damaged motherboard, freezes up during different parts of any type of install. what on earth......we've never had this kind of behavior out of a machine, and we've done many many machines over the years. argh. Amy

uh, also, i have a confession to make. i was really tired when i changed out the hardware. instead of plugging in the two external usb combos into two of the usb slots, i plugged in the two usb's from the ups's. please tell me this is not my problem, that i shorted the board by doing this. amy