Changed motherboards and can't boot from USB CD-ROM
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 11:54 am
My motherboard died about a week ago. I ordered a new board and installed it. Now Windows XP Pro SP3 won't get past the Windows loading screen.
It goes to a blue screen of death that apologizes, but states that windows has encountered an error and cannot continue loading.
I know this is happening because windows does not have the necessary drivers to run with the new board.
I then have to hard reset the machine.
I've tried to use the windows boot menu to select safe mode and safe mode with command prompt. Both of these result in the blue screen of death and the same message.
The only difference is that I can see which files windows is processing before the screen comes up.
So, I tried to use my replacement windows xp cd to boot from. However, the new board seems to be having problems booting from the external USB CD-ROM drive.
I've set it to boot from the USB CD-ROM, it just doesn't seem to want to. The mobo recognizes there is a disk in the drive, it just never gets passed this and decides to load windows from HD instead.
I have also tried using an older cd-rom drive that is in my pc, but for some reason the older drive will only recognize the UBCD disk as bootable, not the windows xp disk.
The kicker is that the very same windows xp disk booted fine on the old board with the same usb cd-rom drive. Just doesn't work on this board for some reason.
Anyway, now I'm stuck on stupid with UBCD. I can run diagnostics, and run commands, but for some reason I can't view the contents of the win xp pro disk to initiate the "WINNT.EXE" executable to get windows to load the necessary motherboard drivers.
I try to navigate to the CD-ROM drive using "cdd t:" and I get the "T:\" command prompt, however, I cant view the file structure using "dir". I get an error message compaining that "there is no name for volume t," or something like that. Even though I know there is a file structure on the disk.
I've also noticed that the CD-ROM lite just blink on and off endlessly, with the windows xp disk in there.
I can view the file structure of the UBCD CD-ROM in the same drive, just not the windows xp disk.
I thought maybe the older drive was having issue reading out to the edge of the disk, as this wouldn't be a problem for the UBCD disk with less than 300 MB of data, but may pose a problem for the win xp pro disk at just under 700 MB.
With this is mind I tried to access the USB-CD-ROM drive, with the "USB" command. However, though I can see the USB-CD-ROM drive initialize, but the command end without adding the drive. I'm guessing this command is only good for USB HD?
So, I'm at an impass.
Does anyone have a suggestion for how I should proceed?
Is there a way to access and use the USB CD-ROM drive to explore the file structure of the win xp pro disk and execute the "WINNT.exe" file to repair my windows xp pro install with the correct drivers for my mother board?
Is there a way to simply copy the drivers to the windows directory on the system drive? By that I mean to say, that I know how to get to the system drive, but I don't know where to put the motherboard drivers, or if there are other drivers I would have to erase.
Could it be as easy as simply erasing some drivers that will then force win xp pro to reload the motherboard drivers from the new disk?
Any help is appreciated.
Incidentals:
Motherboard: WinFast NF4UK8AA
USB-DVDRW: Samsung Writemaster
Internal CD-ROM: Memorex JusLink
Thanks!
It goes to a blue screen of death that apologizes, but states that windows has encountered an error and cannot continue loading.
I know this is happening because windows does not have the necessary drivers to run with the new board.
I then have to hard reset the machine.
I've tried to use the windows boot menu to select safe mode and safe mode with command prompt. Both of these result in the blue screen of death and the same message.
The only difference is that I can see which files windows is processing before the screen comes up.
So, I tried to use my replacement windows xp cd to boot from. However, the new board seems to be having problems booting from the external USB CD-ROM drive.
I've set it to boot from the USB CD-ROM, it just doesn't seem to want to. The mobo recognizes there is a disk in the drive, it just never gets passed this and decides to load windows from HD instead.
I have also tried using an older cd-rom drive that is in my pc, but for some reason the older drive will only recognize the UBCD disk as bootable, not the windows xp disk.
The kicker is that the very same windows xp disk booted fine on the old board with the same usb cd-rom drive. Just doesn't work on this board for some reason.
Anyway, now I'm stuck on stupid with UBCD. I can run diagnostics, and run commands, but for some reason I can't view the contents of the win xp pro disk to initiate the "WINNT.EXE" executable to get windows to load the necessary motherboard drivers.
I try to navigate to the CD-ROM drive using "cdd t:" and I get the "T:\" command prompt, however, I cant view the file structure using "dir". I get an error message compaining that "there is no name for volume t," or something like that. Even though I know there is a file structure on the disk.
I've also noticed that the CD-ROM lite just blink on and off endlessly, with the windows xp disk in there.
I can view the file structure of the UBCD CD-ROM in the same drive, just not the windows xp disk.
I thought maybe the older drive was having issue reading out to the edge of the disk, as this wouldn't be a problem for the UBCD disk with less than 300 MB of data, but may pose a problem for the win xp pro disk at just under 700 MB.
With this is mind I tried to access the USB-CD-ROM drive, with the "USB" command. However, though I can see the USB-CD-ROM drive initialize, but the command end without adding the drive. I'm guessing this command is only good for USB HD?
So, I'm at an impass.
Does anyone have a suggestion for how I should proceed?
Is there a way to access and use the USB CD-ROM drive to explore the file structure of the win xp pro disk and execute the "WINNT.exe" file to repair my windows xp pro install with the correct drivers for my mother board?
Is there a way to simply copy the drivers to the windows directory on the system drive? By that I mean to say, that I know how to get to the system drive, but I don't know where to put the motherboard drivers, or if there are other drivers I would have to erase.
Could it be as easy as simply erasing some drivers that will then force win xp pro to reload the motherboard drivers from the new disk?
Any help is appreciated.
Incidentals:
Motherboard: WinFast NF4UK8AA
USB-DVDRW: Samsung Writemaster
Internal CD-ROM: Memorex JusLink
Thanks!