Philip said:
Hi,
Can anyone advise me, please? I've built a quick new barebones PC, and
have been trying to get the HDD from the old one to run in it - no joy, I
get a continuous reboot loop intead. I get the same thing in Safe Mode. What
have I done wrong, and how can I fix it? The OS is Windows XP Pro, by the
way.
TIA,
Philip
Try a Repair Install. A Repair Install takes Windows back to the
state it was in when installed from the CD. If the CD had SP2 on
it, then you'll be at SP2 when finished. (If you added a Service
Pack via download, then slipstreaming it into a new CD helps. I've
got SP4 slipstreamed into a new Win2K CD, for any reinstalls
I have to do for my current machine.) All applications will
still be present, and settings still there. You'll have to go
to Windows Update and redo the security updates and other
patches, but you won't have to touch the applications. Don't take
hardware drivers from Windows Update - get them from the
manufacturer if you can.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
For my home builds, another thing I do before moving the
hard drive, is clone a copy onto a spare drive, as my
backup. If the Repair Install fails in some way, you
have something to fall back on. I even leave the old
machine functional, until the "transplant" is finished.
On one occasion, I had to boot the old machine and
rely on my clone disk, before trying again.
When cloning a drive, I've found that the first time
you boot the cloned drive, it should be the only
drive on the machine. I had to clone and try again
once, and removing the original drive from the machine,
for the first reboot only, seemed to help. You can add
the data drives back in, once the suspense filled part
is done.
The same applies to the repair install. If the boot
drive is the only drive connected, there is less chance
that something stupid will happen. For example, sometimes
the new computer has bad or poorly adjusted RAM, and if
things aren't going well, you don't want any data only
drives to be affected.
For testing new hardware, I recommend booting a Knoppix
or Ubuntu LiveCD, as those don't need a hard drive to
operate. Just seeing a bunch of good status messages
in the Knoppix boot window, is some reassurance the
new computer is healthy to some extent. Running a
copy of Prime95 (torture test option) from mersenne.org ,
allows stress testing the CPU. Prime95 is available for
both Windows and Linux, so by using the Linux CD and
a copy of Prime95, in a few hours of testing you can be
assured that the RAM is in good shape. Prime95 stops on
the first calculation error it detects, and intermediate
results are stored in RAM, so you get good test coverage.
Paul
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