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Going for it - Upgrade

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Cyborg

Member
Joined
Oct 4, 2002
Finally I'm going for it.
I have a PIII 700@933 on an Abit BE6II for a couple of years and I'm very happy with it.
The only thing that kept me from upgrading is the fact that I would have to replace the MB and this means trouble for the setup on my HD.
Now I decided to go for an Asus P4B533-E a P4 2.4 CPU, 512MB DDR and a new geforce 4 Ti4200.

I'm using WinXP Pro with SP1 installed on NTFS and it never once crashed on me.

Now the question:
Is there any way to keep my hard drive exactly the way it is when I replace those components?

If not, I know I would have to reinstall all my software and for this, where can I find a list of files that keep my outlook addresses, birthday list in calendar, favorites, all email folders and email in those folders etc. etc.
I do have backups, even iso image from my HD, but as I understand it, it won't make a difference when installing a new MB :>(

Ohhh, what a pain it would be.

Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
If you're making that large of an upgrade, it's best to do a backup of your data files, and do a complete format.

It may be possible to continue running Windows XP with the new hardware, but I wouldn't recommend it, as old drivers and system components might not work properly or they might slow down your system.
 
If you feel lucky, you could try a repair install of XP. Make sure your machine is setup correctly, set the boot order to CDROM, and go from there. It might work just fine, and if not, you reformat then.
 
If you want to save outlook stuff its saved in C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Identities
 
Yakbak said:

It may be possible to continue running Windows XP with the new hardware, but I wouldn't recommend it, as old drivers and system components might not work properly or they might slow down your system.

It won't work corectly, at least not withought reinstalling xp. I've done it many many times, and it works fine that way, but for example if you've changed your color scheme or changed your start button it will go back to default.

That's the only bad thing about changing hdd's
 
I decided to install all from scratch after getting the new hardware.

Does ne1 know what files use the windows passwords?
e.g. I have many sites that are pw protected, when I access the site, a window pops up and asks for username and pw.
I wouldn't know half of those pws anymore.

And other sites, like this forum, is this stored in a cookie?
So, would I have to backup all cookies in the cookies folder?

Ohh, and does ne1 know what file to backup for WS_Ftp pro?
I have something like 30 sites setup in WS_Ftp and would hate to do it again.

Thanx
 
This was much easier then I thought.
I found out that there is a way to do this without reinstalling XP and it worked for me.
Maybe this helps someone else in the future too.

After installing the new MB, CPU, Graphics card and memory, I booted from the XP CD and started the setup.
Do NOT take the "repair" at this stage, then after the license agreement chose the "repair installation".
After XP is done doing it's thingy, I just had to boot into save mode and remove the graphics card, I then installed the new graphics card drivers and voila, everything with my software and old hardware is just the way it always was and the new hardware is as it should be. :D
I had to reregister all MS office stuff etc., but that was no pain either.

Check this thread on some of my testing results. http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=129815

Cyborg
 
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