Hello. This is our first time to build a PC. My husband was supposed to put it together, and I was supposed to get it working.
We bought new parts except tried to salvage a hard drive and a DVD-Rom from older computers.
The first time I booted it up it came up, but since we already had installed Windows XP on the old hard drive, it wanted to activate Windows. We were stuck because it would not recognize our mouse. So, I shut it down and went into the BIOS.
First I changed the boot sequence, it was set up to be removable drive, then CD, then hard drive. I changed it to be hard drive first then CD, then removable. Next, I changed the setting for USB mouse support. It was disabled, I enabled it, saved, exited.
When I booted back up, I got the blue screen error "Unmountable boot volume." I was concerned that I had messed something up with my editing, so I tried changing the boot sequence back to what it was, but the error persisted. I don't see why the small changes I made would affect anything, but I am concerned that it booted the first time without that error.
It's entirely possible that the hard drive is bad. My plan was to format and reinstall Windows anyway. I tried to boot from CD to do a "repair" and could not get that to work - I guess I do not know how to do it? I'm really curious to know if it at least has fixed the problem with not recognizing my mouse, I would love to get it to boot up to Windows. Any advice greatly appreciated.
One other note - I am pretty sure the hard drive is SATA. The motherboard looked like it had a SATA and an SATA2 connector. In the BIOS it looked like the drive had been connected to SATA2 (hard drive showed up there, not SATA). I didn't watch him connect the thing but I wonder if I should look at the connection? What specifically should I be double-checking?
I think this is long enough now - thanks :happy:
We bought new parts except tried to salvage a hard drive and a DVD-Rom from older computers.
The first time I booted it up it came up, but since we already had installed Windows XP on the old hard drive, it wanted to activate Windows. We were stuck because it would not recognize our mouse. So, I shut it down and went into the BIOS.
First I changed the boot sequence, it was set up to be removable drive, then CD, then hard drive. I changed it to be hard drive first then CD, then removable. Next, I changed the setting for USB mouse support. It was disabled, I enabled it, saved, exited.
When I booted back up, I got the blue screen error "Unmountable boot volume." I was concerned that I had messed something up with my editing, so I tried changing the boot sequence back to what it was, but the error persisted. I don't see why the small changes I made would affect anything, but I am concerned that it booted the first time without that error.
It's entirely possible that the hard drive is bad. My plan was to format and reinstall Windows anyway. I tried to boot from CD to do a "repair" and could not get that to work - I guess I do not know how to do it? I'm really curious to know if it at least has fixed the problem with not recognizing my mouse, I would love to get it to boot up to Windows. Any advice greatly appreciated.
One other note - I am pretty sure the hard drive is SATA. The motherboard looked like it had a SATA and an SATA2 connector. In the BIOS it looked like the drive had been connected to SATA2 (hard drive showed up there, not SATA). I didn't watch him connect the thing but I wonder if I should look at the connection? What specifically should I be double-checking?
I think this is long enough now - thanks :happy: