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#1
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Avoid a fresh install of XP...
I have finally upgraded my Athlon 2400 system. I've had to do it in steps
for budget reasons, so the new parts are on the way a e6400, PT880 Ultra motherboard (using my existing 1.5GB DDR333 and IDE drive for now) and 7600GS (passive / silent) PCI-i graphics card. Not a bad deal for £180 (all hardly used parts, from ebay). My question is, are there any clever tricks I can use to avoid re-installing windows? Perhaps remove all drivers using safe mode, then perform the switch over and boot to safe mode again?? Or who thinks its not even worth trying - different HAL etc? |
#2
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Avoid a fresh install of XP...
"GT" wrote in message ... I have finally upgraded my Athlon 2400 system. I've had to do it in steps for budget reasons, so the new parts are on the way a e6400, PT880 Ultra motherboard (using my existing 1.5GB DDR333 and IDE drive for now) and 7600GS (passive / silent) PCI-i graphics card. Not a bad deal for £180 (all hardly used parts, from ebay). My question is, are there any clever tricks I can use to avoid re-installing windows? Perhaps remove all drivers using safe mode, then perform the switch over and boot to safe mode again?? Or who thinks its not even worth trying - different HAL etc? IMHO, its Not even worth the time trying.............. I did same as you a year or so back and a few people suggested a repair install but that just did not work for me. anyways a clean install is worth its weight in GOLD............... |
#3
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Avoid a fresh install of XP...
"GT" wrote in message ... I have finally upgraded my Athlon 2400 system. I've had to do it in steps for budget reasons, so the new parts are on the way a e6400, PT880 Ultra motherboard (using my existing 1.5GB DDR333 and IDE drive for now) and 7600GS (passive / silent) PCI-i graphics card. Not a bad deal for £180 (all hardly used parts, from ebay). My question is, are there any clever tricks I can use to avoid re-installing windows? Perhaps remove all drivers using safe mode, then perform the switch over and boot to safe mode again?? Or who thinks its not even worth trying - different HAL etc? A repair install has worked for some but a fresh install is always best. |
#4
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Avoid a fresh install of XP...
As the technical pros recommend and I have found out over the years thru
experience that doing a fresh install of the OS after changing the motherboard is actually a time saver in the long run. The results otherwise end in a lot of time spent troubleshooting Registry errors and data corruption. -- DaveW ___________ "GT" wrote in message ... I have finally upgraded my Athlon 2400 system. I've had to do it in steps for budget reasons, so the new parts are on the way a e6400, PT880 Ultra motherboard (using my existing 1.5GB DDR333 and IDE drive for now) and 7600GS (passive / silent) PCI-i graphics card. Not a bad deal for £180 (all hardly used parts, from ebay). My question is, are there any clever tricks I can use to avoid re-installing windows? Perhaps remove all drivers using safe mode, then perform the switch over and boot to safe mode again?? Or who thinks its not even worth trying - different HAL etc? |
#5
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Avoid a fresh install of XP...
DaveW wrote:
As the technical pros recommend and I have found out over the years thru experience that doing a fresh install of the OS after changing the motherboard is actually a time saver in the long run. The results otherwise end in a lot of time spent troubleshooting Registry errors and data corruption. I'll add to that: Without the clean install you will always be second guessing and sort of weird error--some of which might actually be a result of the repaired installation. |
#6
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Avoid a fresh install of XP...
"GT" wrote in message ... I have finally upgraded my Athlon 2400 system. I've had to do it in steps for budget reasons, so the new parts are on the way a e6400, PT880 Ultra motherboard (using my existing 1.5GB DDR333 and IDE drive for now) and 7600GS (passive / silent) PCI-i graphics card. Not a bad deal for £180 (all hardly used parts, from ebay). My question is, are there any clever tricks I can use to avoid re-installing windows? Perhaps remove all drivers using safe mode, then perform the switch over and boot to safe mode again?? Or who thinks its not even worth trying - different HAL etc? I have done this successfully, on at least three occasions, the most recent, about 5 weeks ago, when I upgraded from an AMD based system, to an Intel Core2 Duo E6600 with EVGA 680i mb. Below are the steps I take when doing this: 1: Prior to shutting down system being upgraded, for the last time, remove the motherboard drivers in add/remove programs. 2: After shutting down and removing power, inserting new motherboard/hardware, upon initial boot, do NOT let it boot into windows XP. This is very important. Immediately go into bios, set things like date, make sure hard drives recognized, etc. While in bios, go into boot order, and set it to boot from the cd rom first. Insert Windows XP cd rom ( If your XP Install is SP2, make sure your cd is, if not, you can slipstream it to SP2). 3: Reboot system, pressing a key when prompted, to continue to boot from cd-rom. Again, most critical, do NOT let the new motherboard boot into it's existing XP install. Boot from the Windows XP cd rom. 4: Windows XP setup will start from the cd, do not choose automated recovery, select new install. Next screen, accept the license agreement - it will find the current install on it's partition, and you will have a choice when you select it, to do an " R " for repair, or press enter or something like that, for new install. Choose "R" for repair. It will then, start to do a repair install of XP on the new motherboard, which is basically an in place upgrade, installing the proper hal/etc for the new mb/chipset. Once it does it's thing, it will reboot - at this point, go ahead and let it reboot into Windows, do not boot from the cd-rom again, it will finish upgrading XP to the new hardware. Once done, you will need to go to windows update site, and get all the updates release since SP2. I have done this successfully, on at least 3 occasions. All programs remain intact, and a lot easier than formatting and doing a clean install, which would require reinstalling all programs, data, etc. This is what I did on my latest build, app 5 weeks ago, and it went without a hitch - and this going from an AMD based system to Intel As always, anything can happen, so I would recommend always having good backups in case things do go south... Hope this helps, Don |
#7
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Avoid a fresh install of XP...
On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 16:34:05 +0100, "GT"
wrote: I have finally upgraded my Athlon 2400 system. I've had to do it in steps for budget reasons, so the new parts are on the way a e6400, PT880 Ultra motherboard (using my existing 1.5GB DDR333 and IDE drive for now) and 7600GS (passive / silent) PCI-i graphics card. Not a bad deal for £180 (all hardly used parts, from ebay). My question is, are there any clever tricks I can use to avoid re-installing windows? Perhaps remove all drivers using safe mode, then perform the switch over and boot to safe mode again?? Or who thinks its not even worth trying - different HAL etc? There is no reason to believe a repair install or fresh install is better than a PNP of the same OS install, except that the PNP of same requires the ability to resolve problems as you go along, and to boot the system far enough for it to re-PNP in the first place. If/when the migrated and re-PNPed installation is finished, it is, umm, finished- works fine. The clever trick is not necessarily removing drivers, it's Googling for the directions to add generic IDE driver files and registry entries to help it boot far enough to re-PNP. Make a backup of your present HDD partition (but you were doing this anyway because it's windws, right?) then you have the option to gracefully revert back to the present state of the drive if your attempt fails. |
#8
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Avoid a fresh install of XP...
On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 23:04:49 GMT, Grinder
wrote: DaveW wrote: As the technical pros recommend and I have found out over the years thru experience that doing a fresh install of the OS after changing the motherboard is actually a time saver in the long run. The results otherwise end in a lot of time spent troubleshooting Registry errors and data corruption. I'll add to that: Without the clean install you will always be second guessing and sort of weird error--some of which might actually be a result of the repaired installation. Not really applicable, I've done tons of migrated installations without any of these "weird errors". DaveW is out of his mind though, has falsely repeated nonsense about registry errors and data corruption without ever a single piece of supporting evidence. It's real simple. Can you change a video card on XP? Can you change a motherboard driver? That's what you're doing. The first time you install windows it PNPs the hardware. When you plug in an USB drive, it PNPs the hardware. Install a new hard drive? PNPs it. Same thing with another motherboard, you merely have to help it boot far enough to do so. There is no reason to expect more errors, possibly even less if the installation was otherwise stable already as you're presumably starting out with a more mature, patched version of windows instead of reverting back to the older, buggier files the reinstall will put back. It seems a lot of people are just guessing about doing it, because it's really only a question of whether you can do it or get stuck and are thus forced to do the repair or clean install anyway... and determining that doesn't take very long at all, it is definitely not "a lot of time" as DaveW write, it takes far more time to do a repair install of the OS than that saved from not doing so, even when factoring for an occasional instance where the repair install was needed anyway. The thing about windows is wierd errors aren't applicable to old, no longer existant hardware after the drivers are uninstalled. It's not voodoo, the procedure is only a mystery to those who don't do it until completion. Those who do recognize that IF you can, it is not a problem afterwards to be second-guessed. I don't claim anyone in particular can though, first thing it requires is an attempt to do so, instead of an assumption it can't be done... kinda like anything else in life. |
#9
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Avoid a fresh install of XP...
kony wrote:
It seems a lot of people are just guessing about doing it, because it's really only a question of whether you can do it or get stuck and are thus forced to do the repair or clean install anyway... I'll cop to that. |
#10
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Avoid a fresh install of XP...
no problem just shoving a new mobo in, done it lots of times, works every
time! given the choice, and the time, i would always prefer to do a fresh install though, as this allows you to clean out all of the crap that you have accumilated over the months/years since last clean install, allowong the new/improved pc to run to the best of it's ability. one thing i have learnt is that often pnp kicks in before cd/dvd drives (new ide drivers required?!) to save lots of bothe copy the installation cd (\drivers, or full cd if you want to use manufacturers install routine) to a folder on the hdd, then all required drivers are there and accessable. first job for me is to ALWAYS install a/v and firewall, then install firefox and delete any shortcuts to ie, then put on, then run crapcleaner, shocking how much there is and nothings happened yet! |
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