I also vote for formatting that ♥♥♥♥.

After getting everything off via CD and trying to fix it with a CD.

I once had a problem similar to this; I ended up formatting my hard drive and reinstalling windows, but I have a tip for backing up your files. Take your hard drive (and sata/IDE cable) and put it into another computer (have to have a jumper to make the drive a slave if it's IDE); most computers should have 2 power connections though.

Also, you might have to enable the 2nd hard drive in the BIOS as it's most likely defaulted to off.

P.S. Make sure the computer is off when doing this; I'm not assuming you're computer illiterate, but I made the mistake of plugging in a hard drive while the computer was on and now I have a $60 paperweight.

NO FORMAT YOURS.

if you have not found an answer to this yet let me help.
you bios have loaded correctly as you stated. have you did a memtest or tried booting a diffrent OS, my Nforce 680 on my old alienware PC has ran fine for 2 years so it should not be the motherboard unless something when really wrong. boot into safemode and "get" (no matter what way) driver checker, its from the makers of tune-up utilities that accuratly updates your drivers to the windows current. if this does not work try formatting your hard drive and starting over, if you can back up as much stuff as possible before you do. i have a copy of alienrespawn at home that i can upload for your use if you need to recover from a previous point in time. if you already have a system recovery then please use it.

hope i helped.

edit:
i saw you had problems booting into safe mode, on your other computer download WUBI, its a linux installer for windows the lets you boot into linux, installing linux onto a thumb drive and boot from that in PHX (you bios) then (if your on anything but alienware) install alienrespawn using WINE (wine is not an emulator) and then boot into alienrespawn (its a completly seperate OS restoring any respawn point windows creates atomaticly. if none of these solutions work, as i stated before format your hard drive and reinstall your OS.

Old thread is old

Well, update. Took it into Fry's to get it repaired, and they said it needed a new motherboard.

So I got that. Then, they gave it back to me, and told me I needed Reinstall Windows onto it again.

Well, I was in despair for a day or so, until I found my copy of Windows.

I did a repair Install of windows. Everything seemed to work fine...

When it started up, it said it needed to be activated, and that windows would only last 3 days unactivated.
So I click "Yes, activate now" and it just shows my blank desktop. Nothing happens.

I click "No", and it logs me in normally, where I find out that my internet adapter thing still doesn't work.
I also find out I have 3 days left to get this all sorted out before it goes kaput on me.

That was 2 Days ago. I can't Activate it without an internet connection,
and it doesn't recognize that I have an internet connection plugged the back
(also,my sound still doesn't work...)


What I'm thinking I need to do is to get the Network Drivers for my motherboard (Gigabyte EP45-UD3LR).
Unfortunately, that's what bricked my old motherboard. What do I do?

Should I just take it back to Fry's where they can do a repair install
themselves, and get another 3 days out of it, and have them fix it?
(They couldn't do one before because they didn't have a copy of my
OS and they needed to make sure I owned it).

Any suggestions?

If the mobo came with drivers on a CD, then try installing those. They are stock, so absolutely no reason those shouldn't work. If that fails, I dunno. Go back to Fry's and demand them to fix it from their half arsed job before.

Be a man and 'illegally obtain' Windows. ♥♥♥♥ aint worth the money!
Once you 'illegally obtain' it, you will have no 'hurr 3 days left' problems and you will be able to sort out all the issues without being in a hurry.

Plus, most 'illegally obtainble' Windows copies already come with most of the ♥♥♥♥ you need for your computer to work properly.

Eh, screw it. Formatted the thing. Luckily, it was only the C: drive,
and most of my important data is on the D: drive. We'll see how it goes.

I ran out of time on the activation thing anyway. While I was in the middle
of installing the network card driver too.

It was like one of those TV shows where you have to defuse a time bomb really quickly.
Except in the end of this one, the bomb exploded.

Terrorists Win.