Your “system files” are tied to your BIOS. When you changed motherboards, that changed. You may need to boot to the CD with Windows 2000, and reload the hard disk. This was not a project for a novice.
Exactly, it might have been wise to upgrade the OS while you were doing..
it’s possible with a floppy that has fdisk on to do a FDISK /MBR
to rebuild the master boot record. I think Windows recovery also has an option to rewrite the MBR.
But that may not be sufficient... he’s probably looking at a total re-install.
I have tried that. It only goes so far and tells me that it can't find the hard drive. Yet the Bios correctly identifies the hard drives.
I have gotten to the point where the cd asks me if I want to repair "C:=\Windows" and I answer yes. Then it won't recognize the hard drive.
It shouldn't be this complex.