I've just upgraded a motherboard and processor to a Gigabyte GA-7VAXP with an AthlonXP 2100+ and things look more or less OK (1) but when I try to boot into Windows 200 Pro it gives me an INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE message.

The machine has also the ability to boot into WindowsME which it does without difficulty and it is quite happy booting into Win2000 when I put the old Mobo back in.

The disk drive in question is a Samsung device of some type of around 30Gb partitioned as (sizes are approximate):

WinME boot disk - FAT32 - 4.5Gb
Extended Partition
Data Area - FAT 32 - 14.3 Gb
Program Area - NTFS - 6.8 Gb
Win200 Boot Disk - NTFS - 3 Gb

Checking the disks with Partition Magic reveals no problems.

The Microsoft site tells me...
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Stop 0x0000007B - Inaccessible Boot Device

This Stop message, also known as Stop 0x7B, indicates that Windows 2000 lost access to the system partition during the startup process.

This error can be caused by a number of factors, including the failure of the boot device driver to initialize, the installation of an incompatible disk or disk controller, an incompatible device driver, disk cabling problems, disk corruption, viruses, or incompatible logical block addressing (LBA).

The system BIOS allows access to fixed disks that use fewer than 1024 cylinders. Many later disks, however, exceed 1024 cylinders. LBA is used to provide support for these disks. Such support is often built into the system BIOS. However, there are potential problems with LBA, such as:

* If partitions are created and formatted with LBA disabled, and LBA is subsequently enabled, a STOP 0x7B can result. The partitions must be created and formatted while LBA is enabled.

* Some LBA schemes are not compatible with Windows 2000. Check with your vendor.
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but it works OK with the old mobo and anyway, what do I do to fix it?

Hope someone can help!

(1) When the m/c starts up it seems to be reporting XP1500+ but whether that is normal or not I don't yet know and I haven't even started looking into that yet!