I recently bought a new MSI K7N2-L Motherboard and AMD Athlon XP 2400+ CPU.

I have a 40GB Maxtor hard drive which I was using, Windows XP and it is NTFS, and I connected it to the new motherboard and started the computer up (after fitting everything together)

Anyway, the problem is that the computer runs and goes to the windows xp loading screen, but then the computer comes up with a error msg and this shows up for less than 1/2 a second (so i dont know what it says) and then the computer reboots.

I then thought that the hard drive was damaged, but to test to see if it was alright I put it back in my old motherboard (ECS K7S5A) and it worked perfectly.

anyone know why this is happening?

Any help will be appreciated.

XP Limitation to deal with new & major hardware addition, here in your case Mainboard. It seems 'she' doesn’t like it.

is there anyway of fixing it? so that it will recognise my old hard drive?

Its not your hardware or HDD problem. XP is surely reading it which is the reason you are getting XP start-up screen.

XP is not able to find the old Mainboard components for which it was originally installed. Put it back with old mobo and disable Mainboard/ System Devices from Device Manager. You might need to do it from Windows Safe Mode. Then put it back with new Mainboard.

Hopefully this procedure will work for you. HTH!!