new motherboard installed

Given computer from friend, motherboard damaged by water, replaced, using all other components, winXP home edition, friend can't find OS install CD or start up disk, recognizes everything but hangs during boot up. Do I have to reformat Harddrive? don't want to lose data on harddrive! Need to install new Motherboard drivers and utilities. Thanks in advance for anyone who has a solution ! Teched out!!

 

1) can you boot into safe mode?

if so, then try a system restore.

2) try the "last known good" boot option.

if those dont work, you will probably need to buy/borrow an xp cd to do a repair installation.

 

Might be an IRQ conflict which will cause XP to hang booting up. Remove a card, like the sound card and then boot, or go into the BIOS and disable the COM (Serial) ports. This will free IRQ's and might allow it to boot. Then, if it boots, you can go into the Device Manager and see what is taking what. This may not apply to you, but I had this same problem yesterday. XP would hang on the boot. This was with a new MB but same video and LAN cards. Disabled the COMs in the BIOS and it booted but without COM Ports. The sound was taking IRQ3 which is what COM2 wanted and thus the hang. Removed the sound, enabled the COMS then re-installed the Sound, evrything booted and fell into place. Like posted before, you may need to get the XP CD.

 

I'd start by backing up the files on the hard drive! If you don't want to lose them, that's the first step.