Swapping MBs on XP--reinstall ?

Hello,

I want to swap an upgraded Asus board/Intel processor for the existing board/Intel
processor--from a 775 to a 1336-along with a new video card. The processor will be
Intel. I will be going from Asus to Asus and Intel to intel.Plus a new video card. Will
XP boot the new board or will I have to chose between a reistall of XP / 7 ? Thx,

troop wrote:
Hello,

I want to swap an upgraded Asus board/Intel processor for the existing board/Intel
processor--from a 775 to a 1336-along with a new video card. The processor will be
Intel. I will be going from Asus to Asus and Intel to intel.Plus a new video card. Will
XP boot the new board or will I have to chose between a reistall of XP / 7 ? Thx,

You should be able to do a Repair Install. A Repair Install leaves
your applications and data intact. It mainly focuses on OS files.
You need your WinXP install CD to do that. If the hard drive is out
of a Dell, there isn't the equivalent of an install CD on there.
We're talking about what options exist for a person with a
WinXP CD in their hands.

Any time you buy a new motherboard, check the download page for the
motherboard, and see if the drivers list includes WinXP. That
way, there will be fewer surprises.

A Repair Install is one thing. A Clean Install on the other hand,
is a clean sweep and means more post-install cleanup work for you.
You have to reinstall your programs in that case.

Note that a Repair Install is not completely without issues. If you
currently have IE8 installed, you might want to uninstall that
and go back to IE6. I understand a Repair Install can have issues if
it is over top of IE8. I tried to find references to what happens to
WMP, but can't find any dependencies on it. So perhaps you'll just
have to reinstall the most recent version of WMP to fix it up after
the repair.

"How to perform a repair installation of Windows XP
if a later version of Internet Explorer is installed"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917964

A Repair Install gives you an opportunity to press F6 and install
a driver so you can access the hard drive. Otherwise, depending on
the transition from one motherboard to the next, the disk might not
be visible. For example, maybe you'll want to operate the Southbridge
disk interfaces in AHCI mode, and in WinXP that would mean
installing a F6 driver early in the Repair Install.

If you attempt to just boot the new set of hardware, in addition
to the hard disk driver issue (not being able to see the disk), WinXP
also has its activation logic. On the surface of it, you'd think
activation would allow you to boot and then automatically try to
resolve the activation over the net. But I've heard of people
getting stuck, and the OS basically won't do anything. So if that
happened, then it would be Repair Install time. And if you see a
Repair Install in your future, make sure you do the research on
what software should be uninstalled first so it will work.

I have been able to move a disk drive from one machine to another
with Win2K, but there is no activation on the Win2K I've got. All
I have to do is take care of the disk interface mode issue and
away it goes.

In any case, only a fool moves a disk from one machine to another
without backups. I've had to go to my backups a few times, while
trying these experiments. When you buy a new motherboard, buy a
spare disk at the same time. It is then easier to back out of a
mess, if your original C: contents are safe some where. Make your backup
(sector by sector) first. Move the original disk to the new
machine. Do your experiments. If the experiments fail, move
the disk back to the original hardware configuration, and reclone
from the backup.

The other thing I've learned, is to always have two computers
to work with :-) If the new configuration won't start, you'll
need a second computer to help clone disks or whatever. I've actually
managed to break two computers at the same time, so very occasionally
a third computer comes in handy.

Good luck,
Paul

Paul wrote:
troop wrote:
Hello,

I want to swap an upgraded Asus board/Intel processor for the existing
board/Intel processor--from a 775 to a 1336-along with a new video
card. The processor will be Intel. I will be going from Asus to Asus
and Intel to intel.Plus a new video card. Will XP boot the new board
or will I have to chose between a reistall of XP / 7 ? Thx,

You should be able to do a Repair Install. A Repair Install leaves
your applications and data intact. It mainly focuses on OS files.
You need your WinXP install CD to do that.

Hi Paul. As I mentioned in another thread, a couple of days ago I
attempted to move my system from an Asus P5K mbo to a P5Q. While
ultimately I decided to revert to the P5K, for a time I was running on
the P5Q. I started by connecting only my HDD that contains operating
systems. All data drives were disconnected so there'd be no chance of
losing data. I knew that no matter what I might do to screw up my boot
partition with the P5Q, I could always restore the partition with a
Ghost backup file if I needed to.

So now what's probably a dumb question. You'd mentioned I'd need to do
a repair install, but I swear I couldn't figure out how. I've seen the
repair install option before, but this time it never popped up. As far
as I could tell, I wasn't offered an opportunity to "press r" to do a
repair install. Maybe I should have tried a different XP installation
disk. But this disk would just boot and offer me the option to install
XP and I went right up to the brink of installing XP on the C:
partition. But with "repair" never presented as an option, I backed out.

Was I too timid? If I'd highlighted the C: partition and hit "enter" to
install, would I have been offered the "repair" option at that point? I
feared that if I hit "enter" a full installation would begin and I'd
lose my C: installation completely without ever being offered an
opportunity to do a repair.

After backing out of the installation I tried just booting from the C:
partition using the XP installation tailored for the P5K. To my
surprise, XP started right up and immediately began installing drivers.
Apparently I would be able to use my P5K XP installation on the P5Q
without a "repair install."

Well, as I mentioned before, I ultimately decided to revert to the P5K,
and in fact, when I had everything back in place I booted into a
different OS and used Ghost to restore my C: partition. (Didn't want to
confuse things with the P5Q drivers that had been installed.)

Should I have hit some function key when booting from the XP
installation disk in order to bring up "repair install?" Or would I
have been given the option after choosing the C: partition as the target
and pressing "enter?"


--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

troop writes:

Hello,

I want to swap an upgraded Asus board/Intel processor for the existing board/Intel
processor--from a 775 to a 1336-along with a new video card. The processor will be
Intel. I will be going from Asus to Asus and Intel to intel.Plus a new video card. Will
XP boot the new board...

If you take some precautions, then yes. There are instructions around,

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/...4&m=1400925745

is one I've used successfully. It really comes down to making sure you
have the drivers you need for the new board installed before the swap.
Especially for hard disk, it's kinda hard to boot otherwise.

I'd probably take the change in stages, motherboard first and video
later. Or if the same drivers are good for both video cards, then it's
an easy change.

Bill Anderson writes:

Was I too timid? If I'd highlighted the C: partition and hit "enter"
to install, would I have been offered the "repair" option at that
point?

Probably not. What I have is a XP Pro corporate CD, with SP3 and AHCI
drivers added by myself (easy to do with nlite). It comes up first
with a menu like this:

* To set up Windows XP now, press ENTER.
* To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R.

After pressing enter, it shows a license agreement, then I get list of
partitions and can choose 'R' to repair, or ESC to install a fresh
copy.

Anyways, the thing about repair install is that it puts whatever you
have on the CD on your HD. So if you were to pop in a vintage XP
installation media from 2003, then everything goes back in time to
that and you can enjoy hours of installing updates... Or possible get
infected by any number of really old worms and what have you and never
get anywhere.

After backing out of the installation I tried just booting from the C:
partition using the XP installation tailored for the P5K. To my
surprise, XP started right up and immediately began installing
drivers. Apparently I would be able to use my P5K XP installation on
the P5Q without a "repair install."

It's not very surprising, since there's very little difference between
P5K and P5Q.

I just did it, going from gigabyte to gigabyte and AMD to AMD.

When I booted XP, a lot of 'found new hardware' messages popped up. I
cancelled them and installed all the GigaByte drivers.

No issues.

--g

In article , says...
troop wrote:
Hello,

I want to swap an upgraded Asus board/Intel processor for the existing board/Intel
processor--from a 775 to a 1336-along with a new video card. The processor will be
Intel. I will be going from Asus to Asus and Intel to intel.Plus a new video card. Will
XP boot the new board or will I have to chose between a reistall of XP / 7 ? Thx,

Any time you buy a new motherboard, check the download page for the
motherboard, and see if the drivers list includes WinXP. That
way, there will be fewer surprises.


The idea here is to install the new Intel MB drivers on XP before I swap boards ? Does
that help XP find and accept the new processor and MB ? I thought running the newer
Intel inf on the current system would not make drivers for another MN/chipset available
to XP upon booting the new system because they would not be installed on the old system.

There is no single answer to this question (can you move an installed
copy of Windows from one motherboard to another). It depends on way too
many variables, and the fact that it's Intel to Intel (e.g. CPU &
chipset) doesn't really say much, because there are so many Intel
chipsets and configurations. Really, the only way to find out is to try
it, although a Repair install should be possible (but those sometimes
"clobber" a lot more things than one would think).


geoff wrote:
I just did it, going from gigabyte to gigabyte and AMD to AMD.

When I booted XP, a lot of 'found new hardware' messages popped up. I
cancelled them and installed all the GigaByte drivers.

No issues.

--g

troop wrote:
In article , says...
troop wrote:
Hello,

I want to swap an upgraded Asus board/Intel processor for the existing board/Intel
processor--from a 775 to a 1336-along with a new video card. The processor will be
Intel. I will be going from Asus to Asus and Intel to intel.Plus a new video card. Will
XP boot the new board or will I have to chose between a reistall of XP / 7 ? Thx,
Any time you buy a new motherboard, check the download page for the
motherboard, and see if the drivers list includes WinXP. That
way, there will be fewer surprises.


The idea here is to install the new Intel MB drivers on XP before I swap boards ? Does
that help XP find and accept the new processor and MB ? I thought running the newer
Intel inf on the current system would not make drivers for another MN/chipset available
to XP upon booting the new system because they would not be installed on the old system.

I mention checking the web site, in advance of purchasing, to make sure your OS
is supported.

At least a few people have bought motherboards, assuming they could install Win98.
If they checked the web page for their board, there are no Win98 drivers, and that
would be a hint that the board might not be the best for them.

In terms of drivers, one thing that would be popular is an AHCI driver for the
disk. Either using the new driver CD that comes in the motherboard box, or
by downloading the appropriate package for preparing an F6 floppy disk, you can prepare
in advance, for any need to press F6 and install a disk driver.

On the new chipsets, you have IDE, AHCI, RAID as options. If the old motherboard
was installed in IDE mode, and the new motherboard was set to IDE mode, there
are two advantages to that. The first is, the transplanted C: drive may boot
right away. (It might get stuck on activation issues, but the boot process
would at least work.) The second is, if you do a Repair Install, you don't need
to install a driver for the IDE or "vanilla" mode on the Southbridge. Microsoft
has bundled a plain SATA driver for the Southbridge, since SP1 of WinXP. Microsoft
doesn't provide an AHCI driver for WinXP, but has done so for their more modern
OSes.

So, why don't most people use the "vanilla" IDE mode ? The reason they don't, has
to do with the features of AHCI. AHCI supports hot swap, so if there is ESATA on
the back of the computer, AHCI would be of benefit for the hot swap. AHCI uses the
same driver ingredients as RAID, and if you want to transition to using RAID
in the future, currently having AHCI is the springboard (preparatory step)
for doing that. So most people would not use the "vanilla" mode, since it
would cramp their style later. But if your objective was to do as clean
a transition as possible, having vanilla IDE mode on the source and destination
motherboard, would be the way to go. That is how I was able to move Win2K from
one Intel Southbridge motherboard to another one. The same Microsoft bundled
driver worked with both, so I could boot right away. The New Hardware Wizard
was pretty busy, and it took a couple hours of driver installs to clean up
Device Manager, but at least I didn't get stuck at the boot step.

Another way to transition from one computer to another, is with a
"bounce install". Say I own an IDE disk, and I also have a Promise Ultra133
PCI controller card in my junk box. On the original computer, I plug in the Promise
card and I install the Promise driver. I move the C: disk over to use the IDE
connector on the Promise card. I boot at least once to prove the disk can be
booted from the Promise card. Then, I turn off the first computer, and move
both the Promise PCI card, disk, cable and all, to the new computer. When
the disk boots in the new environment, it is in familiar territory. The
Promise driver that was installed on C: is still there. So the disk can boot.
Once you've booted on the new computer, then you can install the Southbridge
driver in any mode you want (because you're still booted from the Promise card).
Once all the drivers are installed on the new computer, you move the disk over
to a motherboard disk connector. You pull the Promise card out and throw it
back in the junk box. The purpose of this method, is to give more freedom in
choosing disk modes on the Southbridge of the new computer, in scenarios
where you're not going to do a Repair Install and just want to "plug and pray"
with the old C:. I don't know all the issues around activation, and haven't done
enough experiments with my own copy of WinXP to comment on that. But I have
read of cases where people got stuck, and WinXP would not run well enough
on the new motherboard, to be re-activated.

Paul

In article , says...

On the new chipsets, you have IDE, AHCI, RAID as options. If the old motherboard
was installed in IDE mode, and the new motherboard was set to IDE mode, there
are two advantages to that. The first is, the transplanted C: drive may boot
right away. (It might get stuck on activation issues, but the boot process
would at least work.) The second is, if you do a Repair Install, you don't need
to install a driver for the IDE or "vanilla" mode on the Southbridge. Microsoft
has bundled a plain SATA driver for the Southbridge, since SP1 of WinXP. Microsoft
doesn't provide an AHCI driver for WinXP, but has done so for their more modern
OSes.

So, why don't most people use the "vanilla" IDE mode ? The reason they don't, has
to do with the features of AHCI. AHCI supports hot swap, so if there is ESATA on
the back of the computer, AHCI would be of benefit for the hot swap. AHCI uses the
same driver ingredients as RAID, and if you want to transition to using RAID
in the future, currently having AHCI is the springboard (preparatory step)
for doing that. So most people would not use the "vanilla" mode, since it
would cramp their style later. But if your objective was to do as clean

ok to that--thx.