Inaccesible boot device

[osuman]

I have recently upgraded my computer to the following hardware:
Abit Bd7-Raid
P4 1.8ghz
plus existing hard drive: 20gig Western Digital 7200rpm

After having some post errors due to the first stick of RAM being bad I have a new problem.
When booting into windows it makes it part way and then I get a BSOD with a stop error and it saying inaccesible_boot_device. I'm not sure why it waits to give me this message once windows starts running. I plugged my IDE cable into my friends drive that has XP installed and it made it about the same way through the boot process before halting. I then plugged in a hard disk Win 98 installed and it halted before completely booting also. When I plugged it into the XP drive, that hard drive was still receiving power from a different PS but it still had the same error.

So I think I've reduced the possiblity of a power supply error or hard disk error. And I don't think it's the OS cause it happens with multiple disks. I also tried my friends IDE cable with the same results. This leads me to believe it's a problem with the native hardware, ie mobo, or RAM. I really hope it's not the RAM since I already had a bad stick of it.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

 

[Mudassar]

In my experience with a few computers (New and Old), I had to end up replacing the RAM or Motherboard or the Processor to prevent the freeze ups during a Windows XP (and sometimes major errors in 98/ME) Installation

I couldn't understand some of the things you said... however, try testing with another processor or mobo. RAM is a very common one in my experience. -----------------
MK

Hope this helps!

 

[iibboo]

Dont over look the video card in cases like this. When windows starts the boot proces it is using standard vga. Part way through the process it changes to the video settings you have established and starts using the drivers for the video card. So a bad video card or drivers can cause the install or set up to fail.
Have you tryed to boot to safemode using the F8 key at the start of the boot process? That will use standard vga setting and allow you to see if it is a video setting or driver problem.

Also ensure that the boot partion is set to active on the hard drive. XP has a problem installing to a new drive, in that it doesn't always set the partion to active. This will allow you to start the install process. You boot from another source to start the install. But when you start to boot to the newly installed system on the new drive it will not boot and will give the error you have mentioned above.

 

[osuman]

I've tried booting to safe mode as well and it does the same thing. I guess I could try another stick of RAM but it seems unlikely that I would have two that are bad. The first one wouldn't even allow the system to POST. When booting to either drive, mine with 2000, or my friends with XP it hangs at about the same place in the boot process. However, my friends computer with and AMD proc will boot up either drive.
Thanks.

 

[osuman]

For those who are interested. It turns out that simply reinstalling the OS fixed the problem. I guess the drivers it had for the chipset aren't compatible when changing hardware so it produced that error. Oh well, easy fix. Thanks for the replies.