OK I know I have a hardware problem.. yet I can not figure it out for the life of me. My computer will not boot into windows. I get the screen that will let me choose between last know good config or start normally or safe mode, but as soon as i choose one it just restarts. I have put the hard drive into another computer and it works perfect. I have changed power supplies, ram, video cards. I have unplugged everything but the hard drive and motherboard.. but still no luck.... The only thing i have left to do is change cpu's... could that be my problem.. maybe it's overheating???? Any suggestions would be GREAT! thanks

I don't think it's the cpu overheating unless the temp is high in the bios.. why don't you check. it sounds like some problem with windows. i bet if you reformatted and reinstalled windows it would work fine. also when you do that you have to reinstall all the chipset drivers and stuff that came with the motherboard. your not supposed to take a hard drive with old drivers on it and try to use it with new hardware. it could cause that problem. you might want to try asking some people in the windows xp forum.

If you put the hard drive where the OS is to another system and it starts Windows, there is no need to reformat the drive.
Is the second system identical to the one you are having problem, i.e. Mobo?
Try removing all the hardwares from the working system. Then, install the drive to the system with problem. Windows should prompt for hardware installation. Hope this may work.

When did this forum turn into a kiddie chat room?

Kev is correct in asking you to check your temps in bios and also correct when he tells you:

"your not supposed to take a hard drive with old drivers on it and try to use it with new hardware."

Shane, just take a deep breath and start from square one.

When did your problem start?

What did you do?

What did God do?

In other words, we need some information before we can be of much help. Like what happened to cause your problem? Did you screw up? Did your machine get hit by lightning? Are you downloading crap on kazaa? What's cookin'?

Ok here is everything I can tell you:

I built a computer out of spare parts. Everything appears to be working properly. I bought a brand new 160 gig hard drive and loaded windows xp on it... this new hard drive works in a different computer though the two computers are not identical. So I did use the newer working computer to put windows on this new hard drive. So i was assuming that because it is new it has all new drivers and so forth so when i put that hard drive back in the one that i built.... it should work proprerly... yes/no?

I still can't see how it could have anything to do with the software seeing that it restarts at the same time every time and this is before windows even loads. I assumed (which i am probobly wrong doing so) that since the hard drive works perfectly in the new working computer that it must be hardware related.

Does this help??? Thanks again for all your advise!!!

from experience and research, you need to use the hard drive that you will be using connected to the same motherboard when you install windows...you can't install windows on a hard drive and use that same hard drive on a different motherboard, hence the problems you're having

well that is not intirely correct, you can take a old system, upgrade the mobo and windows will do the necessary thing to get it working, usually. my suggestion would be to wipe the hdd and install windows using the machine that you are using the hdd in. that way it will do what it needs to do and if it still has problems we will know it is a hardware fault, hope this helps

i like the word "can't"
because of the newbies, you start telling them go ahead and install an operating system on a different mobo and then take that hard drive and put it in their own system and then what do they get? hardware conflicts,driver hell...would that be good advice? would you do that or would you install an OS on the system you are going to use that hard drive in?

I have successfully put an old hard drive with my win98SE OS on it and deleted the
ENUM key from the registry. When it booted
up, all that had to be done was reinstall
the hardware drivers. I think your problem
is a heat related one.

I had similar problems and it was the vcore of the processor was too low and caused the system to reboot at windows load.