Installed new motherboard, unable to install windows (system hangs)

Hi everyone,

A while ago, my grandparents gave me an old HP desktop. They thought it would be fun for me to screw around with it. I learnt a bit more about building.computers and decided I would just upgrade this old pc. I bought new CPUs and RAM and a new graphics card with the money i got from my new job at maccas (only 15 yrs old by the way), however the OEM motherboard (a8m2n-la) wouldnt take the Phenom x4 9850, so i replaced it with a motherboard (ASUS a2m vm) my friend had lying around. That's where my problems began.

When I installed the new motherboard, I tried to boot from the hard drive which hung at the starting windows screen and then a Windows 7 ultimate disk and was able to get through the loading files part , but the system would hang at "Starting Windows" without the windows animation. I also tried xp and even an 2000 ME disk I found. All resulting in the same problem. Now arises a new problem, my SATA HDD is not detected in the BIOS in this PC or any others I tried. So I'm assuming its dead. Do I need a new HDD, where I am (Adelaide) I can pick up one for about $50 and if so what steps do I have to take to install Windows?

Original specs:
a8m2n la asus motherboard
AMD sempron 1800+ 1.8ghz
Onboard graphics
OEM 300w psu
256mb ddr2 533mhz ram
IDE 80 gb hdd

Upgraded Specs
Phenom x4 9850 (had athlon 5600+ x2 running in old motherboard before)
Asus a2n VM motherboard
nVidia GTX 460
Corsair 680w PSU
4 gb (2*2) kingstob ddr2 800mhz ram
SATA 250 gb HDD



Thanks
Dan

Sounds like you need a new HD, or swap in an older one if you have it.

Then Clean Install Windows 7.

Yeah, sounds like my old HD is dead, but now I am back to my original problem, I am unable to install windows. It hangs at the "starting windows" screen. (new hdd btw) Any ideas?

DestroyRX said:

Yeah, sounds like my old HD is dead, but now I am back to my original problem, I am unable to install windows. It hangs at the "starting windows" screen. (new hdd btw) Any ideas?

This is a bit of a long shot, but Asus lists the board as requiring BIOS 2101 or later to support the Phenom X4 9850.

Do you have that?

bobkn said:

DestroyRX said:

Yeah, sounds like my old HD is dead, but now I am back to my original problem, I am unable to install windows. It hangs at the "starting windows" screen. (new hdd btw) Any ideas?

This is a bit of a long shot, but Asus lists the board as requiring BIOS 2101 or later to support the Phenom X4 9850.

Do you have that?

Yeah, I have version 2102 :/

Did you swap in a new HD?

Enter BIOS setup to make sure HD is detected. Reset BIOS to defaults, set SATA controller to AHCI to try install.

Try wiping it first with Diskpart Clean Command from the booted installer accessing DISKPART At PC Startup.

Then close the Command Box and choose Install Now, use drive options to partition as you please or just click Next to let installer do it for you. Illustrated steps here: Clean Install Windows 7

Still can't get past the windows is starting screen. I finally gave up and I asked Dad if he could take it to a guy at work who had previously fixed our computers to have a look at =) Hopefully he can find the cause of this dilemma. If I get a cause, I will reply so others with this problem will not have to go through what I did. (No homework for a week XD) A huge thank you to all those who spent their time to help me.

Dan