Windows 7: MOBO baked. Need to maintain 7 OS and files from HD on new MOBO

I have read several posts about issues with this already.

I had an ECS P4M800 Pro-M V 2.0 with a Pentium 4 2.88. I had a primary and secondary hard drive as well as a DVD RW on it. My brother-in-law originally build the computer some years ago. I got the dreaded call the other day, "Honey, the computer won't turn on."

DOA, fried MOBO. I ordered a Biostar A880 G + MOBO with integrated graphics, audio and LAN cards. Popped in an AMD Athlon 2 X 3 3.3G and two DDR 3 2G Ram sticks.

Fired that puppy up on my old hard drive. It ran through some system checks, and nada. I keep getting back to nothing.

I had a system backup set up to run, but the destination drive ended up being full, (without my realizing it) and now I'm up shit creek becuase the drive won't boot. I've got some important business stuff on that drive, which I know I can recover, but I would just like it to get up and run.

I have the install CD and it is a direct from Microsoft CD. Nothing specific to the old MOBO. What to do???? This was supposed to be my swan song. New computer and I was going to be rocking it out! zilcho.... Please help me out.

Describe "I keep getting back to nothing" in more detail.

Ditto to the professor. Do you get any diagnostic beeps. Does the motherboard light up? Be very specific. I assume this is your first build?

This is my first ground up build. I am getting back to the system recovery screen. The startup repair utility gets me nowhere, except time to go to the kitchen for a snack. It just cycles through and tells me there is a problem.

It gives me seven problem signatures.

6.1.7600.16385
6.1.7600.16385
unknown
21202009
autofailover
11
badpatch

I can get back to command prompt, but anything else leads me to a dead end.

Thanks for any help.

Go to a command prompt and type:

sfc /scannow

if nothing, then try:

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=C:\Windows

There were some things that went by on the command prompt, but it did not seem to do anything. Ran through a reboot, but got back to where I started.

Okay, what if you installed the operating system on a new drive, and used your primary as a secondary to recover your data?

I can do that, no problem. I would have actually started that process already, but there are some files on my slave drive that need to be preserved before I can do that. Video files, pictures, etc.

Is there a way I can transfer those to the master hard drive or an external drive? I have a DVD burner too, but don't know how to get it to burn without the OS.

Might be worthwhile buying a cheap $50 drive just for the transfer. You could also boot off Knoppix live CD or Bart PE to burn files CD. That would be worthwhile investigating.

Knoppix:
Knoppix Linux Boot CD, Download Disk and Documents, Discuss, Get Help

Bart PE
Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD

I'd echo that. If nothing else, it allows you to try and recover the data without directly messing with the drive where the data is stored. The less you do to a drive and/or file system the safer.

As a last resort you could try doing a Repair Install . I would leave that for a down-the-road type of adventure. If done properly and if nothing goes wrong, all your data will be sitting right where you left it. There are two "ifs" in that last sentence, which is why I'd try what Lemur suggested first.