Okay, I just finished my first build and I’m having a few problems. I used the hard drive from my last PC and while the system boots up fine, it won’t connect to the internet (wireless or otherwise) or recognize the optical drive (though it shows up in the BIOS menu) – making it kinda tricky to install all the drivers I need to. So my question is, what do I do to remedy this?

Do I need to find someone else who has a Windows machine with 3.5” floppy drive and a DVD drive to convert the driver disc for the mobo/GPU?etc.? Does the already formatted drive constitute a Plug and Play OS?

While responding, assume I know nothing, or at least pretty close. But my questions might already betray that fact.

What "flavor" of windows are you installing ? What do you have for a computer ?

Are you staying you just transplated the hard disk (HD) from your previous computer and are using it in the new one ? ... you are completely re-installing all software on the "old" harddisk ?

sorry I don't have any specific suggestions (for now), but perhaps these questions will get us pointed in the right direction...

Yes, just a transplant of the HD -- no installing or re-formatting. It still has all my files, I just need to load the drivers for the new hardware. OS is Windows MCE (I think 2005). I already had the registry key renewed for this set up -- it wouldn't even log into Windows otherwise.

Don't laugh too hard at what hardware I got, being a beginner, but I thought I'd go burly and not have to upgrade for awhile.

-AMD x2 6000
-Asus Crosshair mobo
-XFX 6800GS (eventually running SLI)
-2 GB Corsair RAM DDR2 PC6400
-Ultra X-Finity 500w psu
-A pair of Sony DVD burning drives
-Centurion case
-The old HD is a Samsung 250GB and I have a Seagate 320 to format (just for storage) once things start getting evened out

Thanks, GS!

Ok, so you have two DVD drives. Are they configured correctly (cable select/slave/master) ? If you're having trouble I would suggest connecting only one drive (for now). Configure it as master (using the jumper on the back of the drive) and connecting the blue end of the cable on the motherboard and the black end in the DVD drive. See if that works. I didn't look though the BIOS settings in the manual, but be sure that the IDE connector isn't turned off...

to have both drives working correctly: the easiest way to have both drives configured as "cable select" and use an 80-pin IDE cable. (I think those are standard now-a-days ?) If it's a 40-pin cable then you'll need to configure one drive as master and one as slave. The black connector (end) goes to the master, the grey connector (middle) goes to the slave... blue (green/red ?) goes to the motherboard.



As far as the new hardware, I would suggest doing a clean install. You could partition a 200GB section on the new 320 drive and install on there. connect the 250 as a secondary to transfer all files, etc. Once you are happy and convinced you have all files/settings transferred you can reformat the 250 and then clone the new install back to the 250 drive. (i'm assuming you want to use the 250 as your primary system disk ?) I've used Casper XP for doing this, but I didn't have to pay for the program at the time... there are likely freeware programs out there that would do the cloning job... my 2 cents.

GadgetSmith is right on all accounts. I only use 80 pin IDE cables for IDE devices, 40 pin is not good to use with DMA devices and can cause errors that would cause your drives not to post.
You also stated that the HD was recycled from a different computer, if is was not a 64 bit processor then you might need to do a clean install. I have never used MCE but it shouldn't be different from XP and I had to do a repair on my system after going to my 3800 64. A clean install would be best though.

My two cents is that when I build any machine I ALWAYS do a fresh install and transfer only absolutely necessary stuff from old drive to new drive by plugging it in after the fresh install and transferring what I want at that time. I really think it's the only sane way to go but I'm rather paranoid and superstitious regarding such things. Heck, any computer I have for more than a couple of years almost always winds up being totally reformatted at least once.

Windows often will freak out if you change motherboards. The old mother has a chipset and part of the chipset controls the hard drives. XP will try to run the driver for the old HD controller if it fails to run it makes a "note" in the registry called "NoIDE"

After this XP will always use its fall back driver which often has a hard time with CD ROMs in the secondary slave position or two DVD drives.

The DVD drive should work as a secondary master but the second slave DVD drive might not.

You may have to edit the registry to remove the "no IDE" stamp or you might try to set a restore point after you remove both of the DVD drives.

First I would uninstall any IDE chipset drivers on the machine if you can like NIVDA dma drivers.

I would then set a restore point, This is INPORTANT, don't let it re boot, press F8 when XP restarts and go into safe mode and remove the IDE driver from the control panel. (Start/controll panel/system/hardware/devicemanager/IDEcontrolers. Click it to make it drop down and highlight the IDE controler then right click and remove it.)

Exit and let XP start again . If everything is working, re install one DVD drive. Look on the back of it to see if it is set with the jumper to make it a master or slave, make it the master and for now use only one drive.

Your DVD drive should now work. Insert the driver disk from your MB. The drivers should be in drivers/xp if Window's ask.

Then install the new chipset drivers,

I have changed many MB with different chipsets and had the Windows install live. I delete most of the drivers and remove the HD controller last, because this crashes Windows. Then in the next boot with the new MB, XP will find the new parts and install the right drivers if the disk is in the drive.

Good luck.

Install one DVD drive at a time. Or unplug both DVD drives then get your pc to start up. Shut it down and plug one of your drives back up. Let it recognize it. Then shut down and then install the second one the same way.

ps. Have you got both hard drives installed. If so just unpug the one that doesn't have the OS on it. Reboot. If it starts up then instal the seconed.

Okay, so the problem with the DVD drives is solved. I had the 40 pin cable hooked up right I just didn't know about setting the jumpers to master and slave. Thanks! Did a test DVD and all is well.

On to the reformatting. So once my drives were working I installed the drivers for the mobo and GPU. Was that bad? I mean will it affect anything negatively?

So what I need to do (as verbose as I am, I actually have a hard time comprehending verbal instructions) is to copy my current HD onto a partition of the 320 drive, reformat the 250 drive and then reinstall files from the 320 to the 250?

I thought about doing a whole new OS but I figured I'd wait till Vista became more stable/dependable/whatever. Will there be some kind of problem registration-wise to copy/clone things back and forth like that?

Your computer boots and all the drives are working and your OS boots?

I haven't formatted or done anything to the 320 drive yet, but yes. The computer boots, the OS boots and the 250 HD and DVD drives work fine.

Formating will erase everything on the drive,then it's gone. I'm sure you know that.

You need to do more than just copy one drive to another. You need to make the main drive bootable. You can use fix disk to to this but I didnt see that you were changing drives.

There is software to coppy everything over but not all will make the disk active. ( bootable).

nice. you must be one of the lucky ones. have you gone into the device manager to be sure everything is ok ?

it's really up to you whether to do a clean install or not. all you need is install disk for MCE and the Key... you should be able to activate the product again on a clean install... unless the version of MCE came pre-installed on your first PC, in which case you're likely to be violating the EUA and won't be able to re-activate MCE without buying a new copy. (AFAIK anyway) perhaps you don't want to go through all the pain of a clean install anyway as everything is working ??

if you do decide to do a clean install: remove the 250 drive completely. install the 320 drive and the MCE install disk. when you get to the part of creating partitions, I would create a 200GB partition on the 320 drive and do the MCE install on that 200GB partition. (This is only temporary until you eventually get all files you want off the 250 drive. I say 200, but it could be anything, just large enough to get all the info off the 250 drive, but you don't want it to be larger than the 250. This is because when you get the the step of mirroring your new install back to the 250 drive, IIRC, you can only transfer from a smaller disk to a larger one. ie. if you make a clean install on one large 320 partition, you wouldn't be able to mirror it back to the 250 drive.... software might be different now, but when I was using Casper XP for cloning, this was a limitation... ) After getting MCE and all related drivers installed, re-connect the 250 drive (you will now be booting off the 200GB partition on the 320 drive). Load up all your programs and transfer all your files, etc. from the 250 to the 200. Once you're satisfied you have everything off the 250 drive you can reformat the 250. Last step is to mirror the 200GB onto the re-formatted 250 drive. (at this stage the 200GB partition and the 250 drive will be identical). Rearrange the drives so that the 250 is the primary boot device. You can then delete the 200GB partition on the 320 drive and re-partition/format to your liking.

Your way is certainly simplier by making a mirror of the 250 drive onto the 320 drive, then reformatting the 250 and doing the clean install, but before formatting the 250 drive, I would connect the 320 drive by itself and make sure it "took" without problems. Perhaps I just like making things harder than they should be...

good luck.
gs

I haven't check the device manager yet, but I did notice last night that compressing a file took longer than it did with my other set-up (AMD X2 4200).

MCE came pre-installed on the last PC so I don't have an installation disc or else I would have no problem just saving files to an external drive, reformatting and then do a clean install.

So without an installation disc should I just save stuff onto the external drive and then do do a system restore? Would that even help?