My God-dauthers Rebuild The Head Banging, Motherboard That Would Not Accept XP!

After 3  days in Oakland after getting of the ship and repairing my daughter-in-laws mom's laptop per my early post I was in Bakersfield, Ca. Where I spent some time helping a friend with some projects.

One of these was to find the freeware needed to record music in MP3 enviorment to use in Windows Move Maker to adapt photos and videos for the 55th. year anniversary of her church.

This was an interesting study for me as I had not used the program in a number of years. It was a refresher course for me. Went online; for my needs, downloaded 5 different freeware MP3 Recorders before I found "1", that fit my needs here is the url: http://www.mp3mymp3.com/  this a very well present bit of software with great web help information. I highly recommend this product.

The 2Nd. freeware product I found was:   http://www.finalmediaplayer.com/?src=fmp this program allows us to view any video/ audio that is on the market. I think I counted some 30 different formats used to make video in the digital world to day, only 3-5 are compatible with Microsoft programs. Great product is all I can say about this.

Third product I found:   http://www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free/ a real nice tool with 65,000,000 happy users world wide. was able to convert video pictures from several different formats to work in Windows Media Player. (Am back in Bakersfield; still working on the project at this time).

I know, I'm off track as far as the title of the post is concerned but I feel that this is information that you as a reader should have as it is fresh in my mind.

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To the rebuild of god-daughter's computer.


To start this tower is around 15 years old has 4 80mm fans 2 front 2 rear. the last motherboard was an ASRock P4i65G (Yes I downloaded the manual ) with a 2.5 GHz P-4 this processor has gone through 3 motherboards and is still going strong. However stability of the motherboard is in question as there is an add on video card. The hard drive was also having some problems. Dual PATA DVD Burners, a floppy disk, and 1.0 front USB.

The motherboard is in truth a real beauty with 2 PATA  drive interfaces and 2 SATA 1.5 interfaces. 2; one gig 400 memory chips. An AT (20 pin power supply connector)

Power supply 350watts AT.

This is what I up graded to:

400watt power supply full ATX ( had spare in the house)

MSI G31TM-P21 LGA775 motherboard.

Intel Pentium E5500 Wolfdale 2.8GHz 800MHz Socket 775 Dual-Core 45nm Processor

320gig SATA hard drive.

Ultra Floppy Drive / Multi Card Reader.

Lite-on DVD Burner SATA ( This burner has there version of  Light Scribe winch does not need the light scribe Disks which is a cost saving to us.

Sony OEM DVD Burner. (Was not able to get motherboard to recognize the old PATA DvD Burners; I have found this to be true with 3 other rebuilds even after I downloaded the drivers for the older optical drive units.)

Windows 7 Home Prem.S 32bit.

2each, 2gig. 800 DDR2  Memory.

The MB, Processor, and Memory were a bundle from Directron.com.

A little history, I went to improve the original system using my Spotmau Boot/Repair/Optimization Disks, this was about 9 months ago and I somehow screw up the operating system. Unable to figure out what I did I bought a 160 gig PATA  WD hard drive and took the computer to the neighbor down the street who is a
Microsoft Certified Tech. Said fix it and explained to him what I had done. To at least save the data.

He worked on the system for 3 days and was unable to restore Windows XP Home Edition so installed Vista Home Prem. on the new PATA drive.

3 weeks later Vista died and as my god daughter was getting a little smart in the 14 year old mouth I decided to not look at her computer again, so let her suffer.

Now there are 2 hard drives in the computer 1 with a damaged OS and one that also has died.

When I returned to the house in El Paso I had the new motherboard, processor, memory, hard drive waiting for me as I had ordered the parts when in Bakersfield. I planed to get the other hardware from the local CompUSA store (One of 3 that did not close in the bankruptcy and were bought out by Tigerdirect.)

Removed all the old components tested the fans cleaned the case of dirt. Installed new power supply, motherboard processor memory hard drive DVD burners.

Decided to reinstall XP home 32 bit. I have the disk and was able to find the key code of the original XP OS using my Spotmau Recovery Disk; cool.

Put install disk in the DVD drive that I slected for first boot. bios boot does system check starts to boot then nothing BSD ???????????

Forced shut down Restart same thing; take out disk reboot every thing boots up???? #%*?*!!!! I say.

Have the W-7 install disk drop it in the DVD drive starts up installs the OS on 45 gig partition. But this is the same disk I used to install the OS on that Hp Pavilion so can't activate so I think. Let me back track the hard drive I am using is the 500 gig Maxtor SATA that I had screw up the OS on and am planing on doing a repair/reinstall.

Pull the plug open case disconnect damaged Maxtor hard drive install pata hard drive. after I pull install disk. System boot into Vista, neat not a failed motherboard am surprised that the motherboard recognized the drive learn that the key code is not complete and that Microsoft did not validate the reason for the failed system.

This is when I decide to install the new 320 gig sata drive. Then the failure to install.

Get the drivers installed for the chip sets the video network card etc from MB disk, this is something to work with. reconnect the maxtor SATA drive set it up as the boot drive. Install disk still want to install XP why waste an operating system that you have a good key code for.

Boot up install disk get to the part about installing other drivers, no blue screen good. do so when few minutes later screen pops up install drivers so I do Windows says it has the same drivers OK, use them, I wait nothing 20 minutes I get message from install disk Windows is unable to complete installation need drivers.............. what the heck installed Xp sp3 from this disk on 4 computers never a problem.

This has me stumped bad hard dive? No don't think so, Used Spotmau disk to reformat the disk and delete all partitions. Did a disk check after deleting all partitions. Viewed report no problems.

Tried reinstall on Maxtor HD 3 more times. Pull power plug. disconnect Maxtor drive set drive that has W-7 up again run xp install disk to install over W-7 get the same thing, shut down.

This is becoming a real butt scratcher my logical brain say that this is not suppose to happen.

Got online to DIY-Computer-Repair.com ... Questions and Answers outlined the above.

You can go to the website and read the communications between myself and Mr. Russell as we try to resolve the issue.

He suggest that it is a driver issue recommends certain drivers to be installed from a floppy disk. As I have installed a new floppy disk memory card reader combo I will have the chance to test the floppy drive.

Go to Intel down load the need drivers on another computer use my external floppy drive to make the driver install floppy.

Repeat the process all over again finally get the right drivers downloaded have a choice of 4 to include a raid configuration. try them all still cannot install the system.

Well this is getting both me and Mr. Russell really perplexed.

On a lark I decide to type on the search bar on my main computer in the house: XP FAILURE TO INSTALL now guess what I came up with.

Some of the new motherboard have a raid configuration in the bios and that unless your bios is set to have the raid in IDE you cannot install any XP operating system. Also you have to install the drivers as I have indicated as per Mr. Russell's instruction.

I checked the bios and yep there is a thing for a raid in the bios and it can only be set for IDE! for this motherboard MSI G31TM-P21 LGA775.

End results though the Maxtor SATA Hard Drive had some bad restart sectors when I installed the drive behind the W-7 drive and installed Acronis Drive Monitor and thought at first that it was a bad hard drive the end results is that the motherboard and the bios were designed for only Vista and now W-7.

YOU CANNOT INSTALL XP ON THIS MOTHERBOARD.

Have W-7 now installed on the computer, order a part that allows you to use an empty 5 inch bay to install a front panel that has 2 each,  2.0 USB ports and install a 3.5 drive in a bay that is part of the panel insert. I
moved the floppy drive up to this bay so that it and the new 2,0 USB ports are together and disconnected the  1.0 usb at the bottom of the case.

The only thing that I have been unable to do is find a front audio panel for computers this is the only other up grade that the computer is in need of.

The case is beat up scratched up been around the world to end up in El Paso when her brother had it when in the army in the sand box but started in the Island of Guam where the computer was first built.

Given back to her dad who gave it to her before he died  she has now a good working computer. That should last for another 10 years.

Hope you enjoyed the post and you have learned something you need to know.