upgrade motherboard without reloading windows 2K

[wpatters]

I have an ASUS motherboard running pIII under windows 2000. I want to upgrade to a P4 with the latest ASUS motheboard etc. using the same I/O gear...video, drives etc.
Is there a way to do this without having to re-install windows and lose all the registery settings meaning I would have to reload all my software...I'm a web developer and have tons of stuff. Everything runs good now. I was told there is a way to do this

 

[InnoTech]

if you're only upgrading motherboards and keeping the hard drive, there would be no need to worry as long as there is no incompatibility issues with your hard drive and the board which i don't think there would be. just stick you hard drive in and go.

"Jack of all trades. Master of none."

 

[dakota81]

Actually there's a lot that could not work... every time I've tried to swap out a motherboard, Win2000 refuses to boot and tosses out some disc accessing error. Don't be afraid to try though, I've always been able to stick the drive back in the original system and it's booted up fine then.

I've never been able to get a motherboard swap to work with XP either, and have several friends who also haven't successfully done it yet.

There's gotta be some trick, but believe me, it's not always as simple as it's supposed to be.

On a weirder note, I've _never_ had trouble with swapping motherboards with Win98SE, yet others claim that's a total disaster waiting to happen, go fig.

 

[Mulga]

Never actually done it with 2k but have with both XP and 98. First bit of advice is don't do it unless it is absolutely necessary, It is always better to do a format and clean install. The reason for this is that your OS has settings and drivers for the old board and when you install the new one it attempts to either install new drivers or use the old ones, both of which can cause problems. If you must do it the method with which I have had success is to go into device manager before you swap the boards and remove ALL hardware devices, including and especially all system devices. Then shut down - DO NOT RESTART - and do the board swap. When you first boot with the new board windows will find and install all the system devices. You may have to manually reinstall such things as sound card, video card and peripherals depending on the system. This will probably work but there is still a good chance that the system will display instability or other problems down the track which is why I strongly recommend the format - reinstall method.

Help us to help you, please post back and tell us if this helped.
All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

 

[wpatters]

That is what I've heard too. What if I re-install windows 2k and tell it to not replace the registry settings. Will that help the situation. My problem is not wanting to re-load all my software some of which is tweaked to my liking and would have to be re-configured etc.. Just a whole weekend of work when I have more important things to do. I guess if worse things happen at least the data is still there. Nay advice along those lines?

 

[InnoTech]

i'm not saying there couldn't be any problems but we've never had any. we build and rebuild pc's all day long in the back office and in the field and we very seldom have problems with swapping hard drives. oh well maybe we're just lucky or something.

"Jack of all trades. Master of none."

 

[wpatters]

From Buckeyecomputers:

"There is no need to format and reinstall.
If you are taking an existing install of 95, 98, or ME, and moving the drive to another system, there's a simple way to get it all to work.
Check this out:

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9254

Note: this does NOT work in NT/2K/XP!
There is a completely different procedure to follow, which is outlined here:

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43654

Cheers,
Jim

 

[Mulga]

Both those methods from buckeyecomputers are excellent, reason I did not mention them in my earlier post is I did not have the exact links and was not sure of the exact procedure for 2k. They do basically the same as my advice but are quicker, easier and possibly more reliable. Do not just put the drive in on the new board and hope as some have suggested, it may well work, or appear to work, but there is a very high chance of trouble later on.

Help us to help you, please post back and tell us if this helped.
All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

 

[wpatters]

"All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door" Even that depends on the size of the door!! I sure will respond with my journey.. With hardware being so cheap there are a lot of techies going for bigger, better, faster.

Thanks for the opinion!

As a retired IBMer....we did things back in the 60's and 70's that were cutting edge...always an adventure...what fun!

 

[BuckeyeComputers]

Just to put credit where credit is do... that post above is from Comtech... Still think he should write it in a FAQ