Changing Out Mother Board

I appreciate any confirmation of what I intend to do. I want to change out
my MB to a faster, newer, better one. I want to take my existing, working
hard drive with Windows XP Home and use it with the new MB. From what I have
read, it sounds like all I should need to do is run XP repair install from my
window CD to get it recognized. Does this sound correct? Anything you would
advise I look out for, do different, or misunderstand?

brawn wrote:

> I appreciate any confirmation of what I intend to do. I want to
> change out my MB to a faster, newer, better one. I want to take my
> existing, working hard drive with Windows XP Home and use it with the
> new MB. From what I have read, it sounds like all I should need to
> do is run XP repair install from my window CD to get it recognized.
> Does this sound correct? Anything you would advise I look out for,
> do different, or misunderstand?


A repair install often works in this circumstance, but not always. Be aware
that if it doesn't, you will have to do a clean installation, so back up
anything you can't afford to lose before you do it.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

Hello,

----- Original Message -----
From: "brawn" <brawn@discussions.microsoft.com>
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.configuration_manage
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2005 5:10 PM
Subject: Changing Out Mother Board


> I appreciate any confirmation of what I intend to do. I want to change
out
> my MB to a faster, newer, better one. I want to take my existing, working
> hard drive with Windows XP Home and use it with the new MB. From what I
have
> read, it sounds like all I should need to do is run XP repair install from
my
> window CD to get it recognized. Does this sound correct? Anything you
would
> advise I look out for, do different, or misunderstand?

I've done this sort of thing a few times, and have found that I can
literally put the existing harddrive into the new machine, start Windows,
load up the motherboard drivers from the new motherboard's CD, and expect to
see Windows sail on exactly as before, only usually much faster. I can also
say that this trick also works OK with earlier versions of Windows - 98SE,
ME etc.

The only bit of 'housekeeping' that should be required is to check
through Device Manager and make sure that you have no duplicated drivers
showing in the hardware sections (e.g. more than one monitor, unless your
new display card has provision to connect two monitors). If you have, remove
all the drivers in that section, restart Windows and let it sort itself out
automatically.

If you're not happy about committing yourself 'blind' to what appears to
be such a radical technique, I don't blame you at all - my first attempts at
this sort of manoeuvre included cloning the original HDD's contents onto a
spare HDD and installing THAT drive in the new machine, just in case things
didn't work out. I used Norton (Symantec) GHOST to do it, but other programs
exist - if you have any doubts, your best bet would be to do that anyway,
and remain perfectly safe. Any old drive would do as long as it's large
enough - just to confirm that nothing nasty is likely to happen. You can
play with the setup as much as you like, then, knowing that if anything goes
wrong you can always clone the original info back onto that spare drive and
try again.

I myself did that a number of times just to be on the safe side, because
I had no idea what I was doing and couldn't find anyone knowledgeable to
ask - but when I finally concluded that swapping the motherboard out from
underneath an established operating-system wasn't going to cause unfixable
problems, I left out this intermediate stage, simply parked the hard-drive
in the new machine, and let Windows sort itself out (which it's actually
quite good at doing).

( I can also say that I use this technique in reverse - I have a number
of small, spare hard-drives that contain different operating systems, and I
use these to swap into PCs that come here for repair, whenever I'm faced
with unknown problems. Since I know how these installations would behave in
my known-good test PC, I can often work out the root cause of a 'new'
difficulty quite painlessly by comparing what I know I should see with
what's actually happening.)

Hope this helps - let me know.

Cheers,

Philip

On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 09:10:02 -0800, brawn wrote:

> I appreciate any confirmation of what I intend to do. I want to change out
> my MB to a faster, newer, better one. I want to take my existing, working
> hard drive with Windows XP Home and use it with the new MB. From what I have
> read, it sounds like all I should need to do is run XP repair install from my
> window CD to get it recognized. Does this sound correct? Anything you would
> advise I look out for, do different, or misunderstand?

Windows 9x adapts to new hardware much more gracefully than Windows NT
based operating systems (includes XP). In exchange for the headaches that
go with the OS being more hardware specific, we get a version of Windows
that is more stable than the previous Win9x family.

Having once tried a straight swap of motherboards, only to see the XP
installation die a painful death -- I'm a firm believer in the "repair
install is mandatory" approach. Recovery was impossible after the failure
(no repair option offered) and had to resort to a clean install to get the
system up and running. No fun.

If there are user forums for your motherboard, you may also want to check
whether XP setup provides basic drivers for it or if you'll need to supply
these drivers during the setup stages. If you need to provide them, this
will entail pressing F6 when the text prompt is available during the repair
install. You'll also need a floppy disk with the drivers on hand.

--
Sharon F
MS-MVP ~ Windows Shell/User