Probably a stupid question and I think I allready know the answer (no), but is there any way around the infamous "inaccesable boot device" error message when changing motherboards in Win Xp or Win 2K???

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated as I need to do my girlfriends machine and would rather not reformat and reinstall (again)...

Thanx in advance.. :cool:

The answer might very well be no... but I have heard different also. Obviously some ppl have managed to change mobo. The reason for this is the plug and play functions, and the method I´ve heard about is to boot into Safe mode, uninstall everything (hardware that is) in the device manager (tip: try to keep your mouse alive as long as possible in this process), change mobo, install the same harddrive in the same same position (hopefully you/she has the xp system partition positioned somewhere on hdd0 (the first one)) and then reboot and let xp find all the new stuff. In this process I guess it helps if you somewhere on that hdd have the xp setup dir (/winnt) and also a dir with all drivers you´ll need.
It might be worth a shot - what do you have to loose?

.unicorn

I was told better stick with the same chipset as the old mobo. However, I have NOT tried and proved it yet.

[quote:a32a05140b][i:a32a05140b]Originally posted by .unicorn [/i:a32a05140b]
[b]It might be worth a shot - what do you have to loose? [/quote:a32a05140b]

In my opinion, you ALWAYS need to reinstall if you change a MB...

I know people will say they have done this and got away with it BUT, there is ALWAYS going to be little gliches and problems if you do this...

Its just software, if you try and fool it and switch critical parts around, you WILL have problems..

Just save all those headaches and REinstall, it will only take a few hours, TOPS, and then you will have a good, sound BASE to start from, one you can trust to be fairly stable and secure, (as secure as MS can make it) .

All of these workarounds are just that, flimsy patchwork, full of glitches, just reinstall and be HAPPY...

Just my 1 cnets worth..
SeeYa
:)

Thanx all...

It's my understanding this is caused by Windows looking for a certain partition using the drive controller id, not the drive itself.

Just thought there might be a way to do this from outside Windows, maybe through the Recovery Console or something like that.

Safe mode is a no-go, same error.

Oh well, Clean install I guess.. Thanx again :cool:

BIGHEADover50: I would say that your 1cent thoughts are very well worth more than that. I also failed when I tried to move an installation to my new motherboard a few weeks ago. However, I didn´t get any headache... rather appreciated the oppurtunity to try such a weird thing. What if it ends up in a success? You don´t want to miss that, do you?
It´s always fun to try I think, a basic condition of course that it is not a mission critic system we are talking about.

(No I am not native englishspoken, but you get the point I hope...:))

.unicorn

Reinstalling is best.... that said, what can sometimes work is if you delete everyting from device manager, put the drives on the new board and restart.... windows will pick up all the new hardware and load the drivers. No guarantees, mind. I've heard there is a file you can delete that gets rid of all device info in windows that does it better but for the life of me I can't remember where I saw the info.