Member Avatar for explodinghead75

Somebody at work gave me an Athlon XP 2000+ computer which is faster than my old p4 and it only has 256 mb RAM but it has 3 more slots; mine uses RAMBUS memory which is too expensive, so I was going to put my hard drive in this computer, which has no hard drive in it and when I tried I got a NON-SYSTEM disk error. It's a 40 gb IDE drive and it boots up fine in my Compaq so I don't know what the problem is. When the BIOS comes up it recognizes the drive, which has Windows XP installed.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by caperjack

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A short diagnostic summary and next steps that build on ’s symptoms and the suggestions from and .

First, isolate hardware vs OS without changing the disk: boot the Athlon from a Linux live CD/USB and see whether the Windows partition can be seen and mounted read‑only. If the live environment can list files, the drive and filesystem are probably OK and the problem is Windows/boot related; if the live environment also hangs or cannot see the disk, the fault is at the hardware/BIOS level.

Useful quick commands (from a live Linux shell):

sudo fdisk -l
sudo mkdir /mnt/win && sudo mount -o ro /dev/sda1 /mnt/win   # or /dev/hda1 on older kernels
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda   # requires smartmontools; reports SMART status

If the disk is readable in the live environment, try Windows Recovery Console (XP CD) repair utilities before doing anything destructive: run chkdsk /r to repair filesystem errors and then fixmbr, fixboot, and bootcfg /rebuild to repair MBR/boot records. Those commands can restore a damaged boot record without reinstalling the OS.

If the live CD cannot access the drive or Windows setup still stalls only when the disk is present, focus on the motherboard/BIOS: try a different IDE interface on the board, test the Athlon board with a known-good disk, and consider a BIOS firmware update (consult the board manual). As a data‑safety fallback, attach the drive to the working Compaq or an external USB‑to‑IDE adapter and image or copy important files before attempting more invasive fixes.

Notes: ’s repair‑install idea is valid when the disk is known good; the live‑CD + SMART checks above help decide whether a repair, imaging, or hardware replacement is the correct next move.

Recommended Answers

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Member Avatar for jbennet

you need to change the boot order so it checks the HDD before the floppy, cdrom etc...

btw a new pc means you will have to reinstall windows

Member Avatar for explodinghead75

I went in the BIOS and I couldn't find the boot order; maybe I was looking in the wrong place so I disconnected the CD ROM lol. But it still doesn't boot. OK I guess I will try booting from the CD ROM and reinstalling. That's going to be a pain.

Member Avatar for caperjack

if you have a full version of winxp you can do a repair install ,others here don't suggest it but i do it all the time on motherboard changes .
check here =


also you can boot it to your old computer and uninstall the motherboard chipset drivers,this is sometime the only cause of the no boot in new tower ,

and about he boot order here one bios versions how to .
http://www.whitecanyon.com/how-to-change-boot-order.php

and another's its in the avanced feature section just scroll down a bit .

hope this all helps ,good luck

Member Avatar for explodinghead75

Well I don't know what's going on, but when I try to boot from the CD-ROM it hangs up. I get "Windows is inspecting your hardware" and the screen goes blank and nothing happens after that! When I took out the hard drive setup actually starts to load, but of course this won't do any good cause I can't reinstall or repair windows without the hard drive!

Member Avatar for explodinghead75

Anyone know why this would happen?

Member Avatar for caperjack

harddrive jumper settings ,bad ribbon cable ,harddrive not detected in the bios .bad IDE channel on mboard ,

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