Motherboard crash, new install issue

[Guest]

Hey y'all
Had a little problem with a DFI AD77 Infinity board that I had installed. It's the fourth board I've had go in the same fashion, so I changed to an ASUS board this time. When I booted up, I got the login screen (Windows XP Pro), but had no mouse or keyboard functions. This was more than I expected to have anyway... But, to the issue at hand..
My machine has a second harddrive where I keep most of my important stuff. No big deal there. However, all my e-mail is kept on the primary hard drive, and I need that. It's all in Outlook XP, and I just need to get them backed up before I can reformat and reinstall windows. Safe Mode doesn't help, either. I dunno if a repair installation will help long enough for me to back them up, or if I can do a reinstallation over the old copy of windows to get into it
I'm also wondering, if anyone has any experience with Outlook XP, if the PST files in its directory can be used to restore old e-mail. I noticed, when doing an export of my e-mail for a previous reformat and reinstall, that the exported files are larger than the PST files in the Outlook directory, and I didn't know if there was a difference in that that could cause me a problem in trying to save my e-mail by just copying the files over
I have a sever that I can throw the drive in and should be able to back those PST files up manually, but I was just looking to see if there were other options before trying that. I appreciate your help

Jeremy Austin

 

[neil]

I have just change my motherboard, processor & memory. I carried out an
repair install after booting from the CD, not using the repair console but
progressing to where the set-up detects the current installation of windows.
After the repair finished all is working as before but on the new platform,
I have not had to wipe and start again all emails OK and programs working,
although I can understand why you may want to reformat and start again.

Hope that helps
Neil

Hey y'all,
Had a little problem with a DFI AD77 Infinity board that I had

installed. It's the fourth board I've had go in the same fashion, so I
changed to an ASUS board this time. When I booted up, I got the login
screen (Windows XP Pro), but had no mouse or keyboard functions. This was
more than I expected to have anyway... But, to the issue at hand...

My machine has a second harddrive where I keep most of my important

stuff. No big deal there. However, all my e-mail is kept on the primary
hard drive, and I need that. It's all in Outlook XP, and I just need to get
them backed up before I can reformat and reinstall windows. Safe Mode
doesn't help, either. I dunno if a repair installation will help long
enough for me to back them up, or if I can do a reinstallation over the old
copy of windows to get into it.

I'm also wondering, if anyone has any experience with Outlook XP, if the

PST files in its directory can be used to restore old e-mail. I noticed,
when doing an export of my e-mail for a previous reformat and reinstall,
that the exported files are larger than the PST files in the Outlook
directory, and I didn't know if there was a difference in that that could
cause me a problem in trying to save my e-mail by just copying the files
over.

I have a sever that I can throw the drive in and should be able to back

those PST files up manually, but I was just looking to see if there were
other options before trying that. I appreciate your help.

 

[Guest]

Neil
I'll try that. I just reformatted not a week ago anyway, so it's not like the installation is cluttered or anything, just didn't know if a repair installation would wipe anything out. I'll let ya know what happens, thanks

Jeremy

 

[Guest]

Well, I tried it your way, Neil. Couldn't get the thing to boot off the CD. Tried it in both of my drives, but just couldn't get it to work for some reason. It kept changing the boot CD on me anyway, so I went out to find a BIOS update, thinking maybe they had problems booting from CD. The only update I could find was fixing problems with wireless mice and keyboards not working (and, yup, my mouse has no tail). Still wouldn't boot off the CD, but it started right up just fine after that. I'll see how it works from here on out, but it's looking good to start

Oh, and looking back, the reason I couldn't get the Windows XP disc to boot up was because it was the ME disc in the drive... Microsoft, please stop making them all shiny..

Jeremy

 

[neil]

Ah,
Well done then in the end, hope it continues OK. Setting the boot drive as
cdrom to carry out a repair install is the prescribed method so it should
work and it should leave logins, other programs, settings in tact.
I have my first boot drive as floppy, second as CD and third as HD.

Neil

Well, I tried it your way, Neil. Couldn't get the thing to boot off the

CD. Tried it in both of my drives, but just couldn't get it to work for
some reason. It kept changing the boot CD on me anyway, so I went out to
find a BIOS update, thinking maybe they had problems booting from CD. The
only update I could find was fixing problems with wireless mice and
keyboards not working (and, yup, my mouse has no tail). Still wouldn't boot
off the CD, but it started right up just fine after that. I'll see how it
works from here on out, but it's looking good to start.

Oh, and looking back, the reason I couldn't get the Windows XP disc to

boot up was because it was the ME disc in the drive... Microsoft, please
stop making them all shiny...