Noooobie Questiooooon!

riptide

OK. Newbie question. I haven't even googled to find answers yet. I'm gonna get a new motherboard soon. So i intend to swap one for the one I have. Is there any pitfalls regarding XP professional when i boot up using the same harddrives? I presume I'll have to install all the new drivers for onboard lan, audio etc! Also will windows decide that I have to reactivate? Should I hunt down all the motherboard software drivers on my harddrive and delete them? Will the new mobo Installation cd facilitate all this (it will be Abit). Any advice from experieced chopper and changers?

Riptide

Endurance Man

I have never go this to work tbh, windows never detects the new motherboard and i have ALWAYS had to reinstall windows compltely.

riptide

Endurance Man wrote:

I have never go this to work tbh, windows never detects the new motherboard and i have ALWAYS had to reinstall windows compltely.

Damn. So this is gonna mess up nearly 12 months of software/system refinements?

Endurance Man

riptide wrote:

Damn. So this is gonna mess up nearly 12 months of software/system refinements?

Well i may be wrong but in my experience (buidling like 5 pcs a week) i havent got it to work.
BTW if you havent formtted and reinstalled in 12months you really should .

riptide

Endurance Man wrote:

Well i may be wrong but in my experience (buidling like 5 pcs a week) i havent got it to work.
BTW if you havent formtted and reinstalled in 12months you really should .

Oh... and pray tell why? Never formatted or reinstalled! Didn't have any trouble to cause me to!

commited

I did this "cold swap" once.. Twas from a P3 500 to a p3 866 gateway with diff mobos but rel similarly hardware. I needed the pc asap so i just did it... Thing was a nightmare and it needed a reformat after i pulled off the data i wanted.
Just do it properly

Endurance Man

riptide wrote:

Oh... and pray tell why? Never formatted or reinstalled! Didn't have any trouble to cause me to!

Well maybe not if you dont fiddle with your pc and load lots of programs, but usually a reload is wise every few months. I like to do mine every 6months, keeps the pc running at top performance. Over 12months your pc has collected lots of junk/rubbish files that you cant see, they are slowing the pc down and you will never find them. Also being connected to the net, your pc is prone to collect many unnecessary files.

riptide

riptide wrote:

Oh... and pray tell why? Never formatted or reinstalled! Didn't have any trouble to cause me to!

Balls. Well I'll just have to catalogue everthing I've done with it since i got it to get it to this state. Format, reinstall and then install all my software, and customizations...

Spunog UIE

your best off doing a clean install anyway.

If you back up your programfiles,apps, games, folders or whatever along with your Application Data folder, it'll save most things. Then just restore them after the install. Oh and some games like to keep files in 'my docs' too by default.

riptide

Endurance Man wrote:

Well maybe not if you dont fiddle with your pc and load lots of programs, but usually a reload is wise every few months. I like to do mine every 6months, keeps the pc running at top performance. Over 12months your pc has collected lots of junk/rubbish files that you cant see, they are slowing the pc down and you will never find them. Also being connected to the net, your pc is prone to collect many unnecessary files.

Well i keep the registry well groomed and all running processes are accounted for. And i run treesize the odd time to see where all the disk data is at any given time. Clear out temp folders, cache the usual.

riptide

Gideon wrote:

your best off doing a clean install anyway.

If you back up your programfiles,apps, games, folders or whatever along with your Application Data folder, it'll save most things. Then just restore them after the install. Oh and some games like to keep files in 'my docs' too by default.

Cheers. I clone the drive once every two weeks anyways. It also serves an alternative to MS's system restore in times of major f#*k ups (like installing Kazaa.. jeeez)

commited

Have you tried using nlite - its quite excellent.

riptide

commited wrote:

Have you tried using nlite - its quite excellent.

No. Never. Just downloaded it. Keep it on the back burner for use late. thanks

riptide

Well, still awaiting anyone with a story like 'I changed mobo with no/few problems...' but something tells me this ain't gonna happen. "Hope is always the last to die"

SouperComputer

Well, still awaiting anyone with a story like 'I changed mobo with no/few problems...' but something tells me this ain't gonna happen. "Hope is always the last to die"

It can be done alright.........


Assuming you still have your old motherboard, this will work on most hardware:


First of all, ideally before all of this, take an image of the drive incase things dont work out.

download & install sysprep:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3E90DC91-AC56-4665-949B-BEDA3080E0F6&displaylang=en


Go to device manager, manually change the driver for your HD controller to "standard IDE controller" and reboot

Go again to device manager, be sure that you PC type is ACPI PC (not uniprocesssor or multiprocessor ACPI) & disable any motherboard specfic hardware such as onboard sound etc.

Run sysprep with the following switches:

-pnp -mini -reseal -quiet

When this is done, it will shutdown the computer.

Pull all your peripherals and non-essential expansion cards out.

Throw the new mobo in and boot up. Windows will ask for you serial and then do some PnP detection, not dissimilar to the windows install process. You will need to reactivate as well, but the switch will give you 30days as per usual.

After a while, you should be back to where you started with your old mobo and you can now tidyup\install the drivers for your new rig.


This may not work however if you are currently running off an SATA controller as, all you can do is chance your arm with it as its worth the gamble. It may also be an idea to install the SATA drivers for the forthcoming mobo before the sysprep to help keep the PnP detection sweet.

Worst case scenario is that you will have to run a repair installation with which you will loose windows updates, but your applications and documents will stay intact.

craigcharlie

I changed a motherboard with *few* problems.... but on win2000. Not sure if that applies. But the person I bought the motherboard told me how to do it... you go into Device Manager, go to ide controllers, and change the motherboard controller (ie the one that's not primary or secondary ide) to "Standard" by selecting a different device driver. Close without restarting, power down, swap motherboard.

worked ok for me, but had to install the latest service pack again and have encountered a few wierd niggling things, like for some reason the pc now takes ages to shut down. it's probably not a recommended course of action for the long run... i just did it to see if it would work and also b/c I know I'm going to buy windows xp soon, no reason to go through OS installation hassle twice in such a short period.

Don't know if that's helpful since it doesn't apply to activation or XP-specific stuff... I know I've seen specific comments on changing out motherboards in XP, but don't remember what advice was given. seems like you might be able to google this tho...

craigcharlie

that's hilarious, cross-post with similar advice... I think souper gave better info tho, since he mentioned that it would be wise to disable any motherboard related stuff and do the sysprep stuff.

souper if you're so smart, why don't you look at my thread about memory dividers in this forum I've been hoping someone who knows more than me will have a look....

riptide

Some good advice here!

commited

riptide wrote:

No. Never. Just downloaded it. Keep it on the back burner for use late. thanks

Its meant to be used before you install windows to trim down the install cd

SouperComputer

craigcharlie wrote:

souper if you're so smart, why don't you look at my thread about memory dividers in this forum I've been hoping someone who knows more than me will have a look....

I did, but i was too lazy to think of an answer.

Ill have a looksie now TBH you might get a better response on tweaking\modding


Ohh, and I second commited's comment on Nlite, tis the dogs danglies.

craigcharlie

SouperComputer wrote:

Ill have a looksie now TBH you might get a better response on tweaking\modding

ahh, i didn't even know there was a tweak/mod forum... is there anything boards doesn't have cool, I'll go have a look now.