Is there anyway I can change a motherboard without formatting?

[sygyzy]

HI,

I need to replace my motherboard because the liars at Soyo can't get their act together and get the Dragon Plus to work with the TBRED B 2100 like they claim it does. Whew, that was a mouthful!

Anyway, I am going to get an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe. I do not like formatting or installing Windows like many of you do here. (Some people really get off on that). I was wondering if I could just change the motherboard?

Now, I have heard a few different answers. One said boot to the Windows XP cd and tell it to repair. Others say I can just boot straight into Windows.

At work I moved a Win2k HD from one computer to the next and it really did not like it. I got it to work though with a registry trick from MS but that was a pain in the ***.

Any help?

 

[LittlePiggie]

I found that a VIA --> ALi was succesful, but an ALi --> VIA was not. I would suggest a reformat, but if you want to do it the painful way, you can demolish everything with ALI in the name and install the new board on that shut down. seemd like a lot of work for nothing though. I would suggest having a spare hd to use as a file back-up drive...

 

[kianss]

iv actually put a emachine hard drive in my old dell [ without format]. But i wouldnt recommend it, All the settings where ****d [ i did it just to see] and it loaded the dell drivers over the ones on the hard drive. Had alot of conflicts , and then it wouldnt go back in the emachine. After a few hours it finally booted int he emachine , and i had to re-install all the drivers and redo settings

but then again them are company computers.With bios and hard drive labeld with there junk on them. Just use a CD-R to backup ur data. Its good to freash format one in awhile to clean the junk you thought you deleted off..

 

[jrbob]

If you are running widows 2000 take a look at this
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q249694&

 

[LawyerLynn]

One thing I did in the past is to use Norton Ghost to create a ghost copy of my HDD on a few CD-R discs and make the first one a bootable CD, set the bios on the new mobo to boot from the CD and then restore the image of my hard drive to the hard drive that is in the new computer once I've hooked everything up and used a win98 rescue disk floppy to fdisk and format the hard drive in its new enviroment. When windows first boots after the installation of the image file it was followed by a lot of "detecting new hardware" stuff and a reboot or to to complete installations, but all worked when it was finished.
For the record though I would state that a fresh install would be better and runs less risk of incompatibilities, lock-ups and errors. My $0.02

 

[rogerdugans]

No matter what tricks you use a fresh install is the best bet.

I have done temp switches quite a few times- Intel system into an AMD rig, XP chip to P3 etc, so I have hit just about every incompatibility there is I think

It will usually WORK, but not always well.
If you try it, do a full backup first and be prepared for the worst.

 

[Deathknight]

No matter what tricks you use a fresh install is the best bet.

Agreed. Every goofy little quirk that you cannot figure out you are going to wonder if its caused by not reformating when putting in the new mobo.

 

[jonspd]

Nice answers guys but what would be the easiest way to save all your system onto cd's just incase u have to go back to the older mobo and chip?

 

[LawyerLynn]

Nice answers guys but what would be the easiest way to save all your system onto cd's just incase u have to go back to the older mobo and chip?

I nominate norton ghost or veritas backup exec. for this duty.

 

[Kunaak]

I can think of a rather simple way.

just do a repair install after the hardware change, uninstall all drivers, especially Via 4in1's and then just do a repair install, let windows detect old version of windows then do a repair install when it asks you, you just press "R" then do it like a normal install.

I've did this about 10 times to a western digital 20 gig 5400 speed drive that I just don't wanna keep installing stuff on.

my 80 gig takes enough time without fiddling with the 20 gig in my second computer.

 

[CrashOveride]

well the repair install sounds like it might work... what i did was delet all the Via drivers and sound and stuff then i just booted up and installed the new ones... it worked just fine no problems lol and i went form Soyo Dragon + to my sig's board

 

[cptkook]

Although not sure how xp with handle it, I use Win98, I transfered from a soyo p4I fire dragon to and Asus p4b533-E with out reformatting. Booted into windows, windows detected all the new hardware installed the drivers for it and its been running bug free. This is on the comp in my sig.

 

[jonspd]

One question wtf is via drivers? dunno
and r u saying uninstall the video drivers and sound card drivers as well?

 

[Paradoxmaker]

I need to replace my motherboard because the liars at Soyo can't get their act together and get the Dragon Plus to work with the TBRED B 2100 like they claim it does. Whew, that was a mouthful!

I like you purchaced a new 2100B and figured out real quick that my DRagon + was not up to it. After jerking with settings and tech support I to gave up and purchesed a new board. However I still like the Soyo brand and purchased an KT400Dragon Ultra PLatinum and I tried just swap motherboards and keep WinXP and all my files.

All did not go well, Via lan issues, 4in1 lockups, AGP drivers that would install halfway and then crash, and the USB 2.0 drivers went wonky also. Is this a Win issue or a Soyo Issue? I blame Gates more than Soyo but both are probley guilty.

So here I am with a nice new install of Win ME because I still can not get my install of XP to accept the drivers for my new board even when I use the latest drivers that are suppsed to fix the problems that I am having.

 

[h0mersimps0n]

The easiest and best way I've found is (after backing everything up) all you have to do is change "ACPI computer" to "standard PC" in the device manager. In order for windows to use the ACPI features it has to locate all computer hardware on a specific set of IRQ's it determines. As a standard PC IRQ's are determined by whatever the BIOS sets for all hardware. Even now if you tried it you'd see that after changing this driver, on reboot all of your devices will automatically reinstall. This assures you don't miss any stupid mobo device drivers that might cause a blue screen.

I've found this works about 75-90% of the time.

 

[SniperXX]

I went through 3 mobo upgrades in like 5 months. Reinstall XP. XP when it installs looks @ all the hardware installed. If you switch anything big, like mobo it usually wont boot. Even with the old drivers deleted. Just reinstall the OS, no need to reformat the whole HD.

 

[radadman]

I had this problem for years. The best you can do is this. Make a disk image (via ghost or power quest) of a fresh load of windows before loading any device drivers. Then use the proper boot disk to restore the image. Its a lot faster than loading windows and normally works as long as the same chipset mfg is used.

 

[ROMAD]

Like others have said, a fresh install is always best. However, if you want you can try this:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

That's the "Microsoft" way of doing it and it works just fine. I've done this countless times and it's never failed due to software problems. I just did my main rig last night as a matter of fact. Now I'm running what's in my sig, from an ABit KG7 setup. However, before you do anything, you should obviously backup your hard drive. For that, I recommend Norton Ghost.

Another procedure that may have been overlooked is using the Microsoft Sysprep utility. I have yet to use it, but I'm going to try it on my next one to see if it saves any time. Otherwise, I will just keep doing the reinstall/repair to upgrade as it has worked for me 100% of the time.