recently upgraded my PC, from this:

Athlon 2000+ XP
1gb RAM *2x 512 PC2700*
6800GT 256MB AGPX8
PCChips M848A Motherboard
5.1 Surround Card.
120GB Hard Drive
DVD Writer/ROM
CD Writer/ROM
250Watt PSU

To This:

Athlon 3500_ XP 64 Bit (Venice)
1GB RAM *PC2700* (I ordered 2gb of PC3200 RAM, so I'm switching them over when it arrives in the post*
6800GT 256MB AGPX8 (from above)
Socket 939 Motherboard with onboard sound card.
120GB Hard Drive (from above)
DVD Writer/ROM (from above)
CD Writer/ROM (from above)
New PC Case
500Watt PSU

Since I got it this evening, the PC would reboot itself automatically. Because of that, I usually get "Windows Inconvenience" and choose the 4 options *safe mode, netowrking, command prompt etc* But when I choose either one of them, the PC automatically reboots.

A friend says that because the hard drive's configuration has changed, because of switching the hard drive to the new PC, the drive needs to be reformatted.

If he is correct, what is the soulution to the problem, how do I get the PC reformatted, if it keeps crashing?

If you need more details, please ask. I'm in no rush, or emergency pitstops in this.

So you just stuck the old hard drive in the new system and didn't reinstall? It isn't the hard drive that's changed. The OS loaded still thinks you have the old system.

I've done motherboard swaps before which involved different (but rather similar) chipsets but the same CPU and it worked okay, although not as well as it would with a fresh install. If I forgot to remove the chipset drivers before the swap, I could boot into safe mode and remove them from there. I would think you'd be able to do the same but due to the drastic change in motherboard architecture I'm not entirely surprised it doesn't work at all.

In conclusion, I think you're friend is right.

Quote from Forbin :

So you just stuck the old hard drive in the new system and didn't reinstall? It isn't the hard drive that's changed. The OS loaded still thinks you have the old system.

I've done motherboard swaps before which involved different (but rather similar) chipsets but the same CPU and it worked okay, although not as well as it would with a fresh install. If I forgot to remove the chipset drivers before the swap, I could boot into safe mode and remove them from there. I would think you'd be able to do the same but due to the drastic change in motherboard architecture I'm not entirely surprised it doesn't work at all.

In conclusion, I think you're friend is right.

What does OS stand for?

Also I didn't have the discs to reinstall windows and reformat the hard drive. What my intention was, send the parts into the new pc, and then reformat the hard drive. I assumed that even though I had XP on it *even though it was very buggy at the time* I would use it for internet usage, until my mate arrived tomorrow to reformat the whole thing.

But now that I know whats happened, I'll be aware not to do that in the future .

os - operating system

Windows is an OS, Linux is an OS, MacOSX is an OS, UNIX is an OS. You get the idea. Cell phones these days have OS's too, but they tend to be much simpler.

If you have any data you want to recover, you'll need to either:

A) stick the hard drive into another box as a secondary drive and back it up onto the other system, then copy the data back over after you've done the install.

Or:

B) buy a new hard drive and install the OS on that, then install the old drive as a secondary drive, copy the data over to the new hard drive, then format the old drive* so you get more space on it. In the end you'll have 2 drives in the system.

*Note: this is not entirely necessary, it just frees up a bit of space

Quote from BigDave2967 :

A friend says that because the hard drive's configuration has changed, because of switching the hard drive to the new PC, the drive needs to be reformatted.

If he is correct, what is the soulution to the problem, how do I get the PC reformatted, if it keeps crashing?

If you need more details, please ask. I'm in no rush, or emergency pitstops in this.

This is the truth. You changed mobo, which at a guess chipset make too (you could change nForce board to another nForce board and such, as I went from nForce2 to nForce4 fine), but any other changes (such as VIA to nForce2) will require the drivers to be installed for the new board so the OS knows where to go, and as far as I know, you can only do this when you fresh install (I tried avoiding it many times, I always fail).

format the OS partion and install the OS again from scratch.
Thats the always best and should be the only way.

I think that if in windows XP you run a repair install, it will reinstall the hal.dll which is custom made every install to fit the motherboard/chipset/ectera. If that works, you should be able to just install the Chipset CD and it should work. That is all I did switching from my VIA chipset to my Nforce 2 and it worked just fine.

Thanks for the help lads .