Kids mobo crashed.
Took her brand new seagate drive out
Put it in a new mobo that only has sata connections and a new athlon processor

So when I boot the machine, I get the BSOD with an error that says I need to put the old controller card back in (?) or put all my old components back in the machine.
Clearly cannot do that. Reinstalling windows seems to be my only option. Looked at the windows recovery console and realized it would not work for me. Did a deep hard drive check and it came back ok.

So my question is, how do I reinstall windows without losing 30 gigs of pictures, documents, movies and music? She seems ok with reinstalling her games but is really concerned about losing the other stuff.

thanks in advance

Try attaching the drive that needs to be backed up to another computer. You can either install it internally in another computer or get an enclosure and connect it that way. You can then copy eveything off that drive and also make a backup of it before reinstalling Windows. You should also start making regular backups of any important files too so that this isn't a problem from when a drive crashes.

Someone was talking about using a utility called "bartpe" whatever that is.
I have a few other machines in the house (have built 2 dozen prolly but this is the first time I have seen this problem) so I will hook up the hdd and copy what I can.
The ONLY thing that is a little hairy is I tried the hard drive copy once before, but none of the pictures or music I moved "worked" after they were placed back on the machine.

Off to try this wish me luck.

OhRob said:Kids mobo crashed.
Took her brand new seagate drive out
Put it in a new mobo that only has sata connections and a new athlon processor

So when I boot the machine, I get the BSOD with an error that says I need to put the old controller card back in (?) or put all my old components back in the machine.
Clearly cannot do that. Reinstalling windows seems to be my only option.
What's wrong with doing a Repair install of Windows? Boot from the Windows CD, choose Install, then it will search for existing installations of Windows. If it finds one, which it will if your CD is the same version of Windows, it will ask if you want to do a Repair install, which is what you need to do when you change motherboards. A repair install will keep all of your programs and data files - that's what it's for.

minidrag said:OhRob said:Kids mobo crashed.
Took her brand new seagate drive out
Put it in a new mobo that only has sata connections and a new athlon processor

So when I boot the machine, I get the BSOD with an error that says I need to put the old controller card back in (?) or put all my old components back in the machine.
Clearly cannot do that. Reinstalling windows seems to be my only option.
What's wrong with doing a Repair install of Windows? Boot from the Windows CD, choose Install, then it will search for existing installations of Windows. If it finds one, which it will if your CD is the same version of Windows, it will ask if you want to do a Repair install, which is what you need to do when you change motherboards. A repair install will keep all of your programs and data files - that's what it's for.

This is what I did--AFTER backing up the hard drive to my server. She will tell me today if all went well.

Thanks everyone for your help.