Hardware failure

I had a mother board quit working. I purchased a new mother board, CPU,
memory and power supply. The old was a P4 2.8GHz. The new is a Core 2 Duo.
That was the need for the new power supply.

I had the only hard drive on the primary IDE and the DVD drive as master and
a IOMega REV drive as slave on the secondary IDE. The new mother board only
has one IDE channel so I just left off the REV drive for now. The Hard disk
is master.

The computer posts and then flashed that windows is loading then reboots. I
then put the Vista Home Primium CD and booted off it. I chose repair and it
told me it could not repair it automatically. In the problem details it
shows "Problem signiture 01: ExternalMedia" .

Should I reinstall Vista? Will that wipeout my data?

If you reinstall Vista, you will wipe out your Data, and any programs that
you have installed yourself. If you have the CDs for them, just reinstall
them.

"Mike McNab" wrote:

> I had a mother board quit working. I purchased a new mother board, CPU,
> memory and power supply. The old was a P4 2.8GHz. The new is a Core 2 Duo.
> That was the need for the new power supply.
>
> I had the only hard drive on the primary IDE and the DVD drive as master and
> a IOMega REV drive as slave on the secondary IDE. The new mother board only
> has one IDE channel so I just left off the REV drive for now. The Hard disk
> is master.
>
> The computer posts and then flashed that windows is loading then reboots. I
> then put the Vista Home Primium CD and booted off it. I chose repair and it
> told me it could not repair it automatically. In the problem details it
> shows "Problem signiture 01: ExternalMedia" .
>
> Should I reinstall Vista? Will that wipeout my data?

Hi,

You need to reinstall due to the hardware changes. There is no repair
install in Vista as there was in XP, you will need to install to a new
folder without formatting to preserve user data (which you really should
have backed up previously). Just don't format, the old installation should
be moved to a Windows.old folder.

Were it me, I would slave the drive to another working system and recover
all data that I wanted to preserve. Then install it in the new system and do
a complete format and reload.

By the by, you will need to use the phone activation method when you get to
that point as the Product Key will be reported as already being in use. If
it doesn't activate automatically, just hold the line to get a live person.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"Mike McNab" <Mike McNab@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:1C5D8CB5-089E-4B92-BD54-62282B7CFFD7@microsoft.com...
>I had a mother board quit working. I purchased a new mother board, CPU,
> memory and power supply. The old was a P4 2.8GHz. The new is a Core 2
> Duo.
> That was the need for the new power supply.
>
> I had the only hard drive on the primary IDE and the DVD drive as master
> and
> a IOMega REV drive as slave on the secondary IDE. The new mother board
> only
> has one IDE channel so I just left off the REV drive for now. The Hard
> disk
> is master.
>
> The computer posts and then flashed that windows is loading then reboots.
> I
> then put the Vista Home Primium CD and booted off it. I chose repair and
> it
> told me it could not repair it automatically. In the problem details it
> shows "Problem signiture 01: ExternalMedia" .
>
> Should I reinstall Vista? Will that wipeout my data?

I broke down and purchased a SATA hard disk and reinstalled Vista on it.
Everything is good. I got my data off backup.

I installed my old hard drive as a slave to get at the data on it. Vista
tells me the drive needs to be formatted. I tried this on two different
computers. Does this mean the hard drive is bad or is there some trick?

Mow that I have a dual core CPU does that mean I can install the 64 bit
VISTA? If so is it worth it? Will all my old software run on it? Where do
I get it?

"Rick Rogers" wrote:

> Hi,
>
> You need to reinstall due to the hardware changes. There is no repair
> install in Vista as there was in XP, you will need to install to a new
> folder without formatting to preserve user data (which you really should
> have backed up previously). Just don't format, the old installation should
> be moved to a Windows.old folder.
>
> Were it me, I would slave the drive to another working system and recover
> all data that I wanted to preserve. Then install it in the new system and do
> a complete format and reload.
>
> By the by, you will need to use the phone activation method when you get to
> that point as the Product Key will be reported as already being in use. If
> it doesn't activate automatically, just hold the line to get a live person.
>
> --
> Best of Luck,
>
> Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
> http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
> Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
> My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
>
> "Mike McNab" <Mike McNab@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:1C5D8CB5-089E-4B92-BD54-62282B7CFFD7@microsoft.com...
> >I had a mother board quit working. I purchased a new mother board, CPU,
> > memory and power supply. The old was a P4 2.8GHz. The new is a Core 2
> > Duo.
> > That was the need for the new power supply.
> >
> > I had the only hard drive on the primary IDE and the DVD drive as master
> > and
> > a IOMega REV drive as slave on the secondary IDE. The new mother board
> > only
> > has one IDE channel so I just left off the REV drive for now. The Hard
> > disk
> > is master.
> >
> > The computer posts and then flashed that windows is loading then reboots.
> > I
> > then put the Vista Home Primium CD and booted off it. I chose repair and
> > it
> > told me it could not repair it automatically. In the problem details it
> > shows "Problem signiture 01: ExternalMedia" .
> >
> > Should I reinstall Vista? Will that wipeout my data?
>
>