Upgrading mainboard - Windows XP

[Samaelryn]

I finally decided that my old MSI K8T800-Neo FSR mainboard, and with it my AMD Athlon 64 3200+ needed to be replaced, and have purchased a new mainboard, Athlon Quad Phenom PIB, and 4gb of Mushkin ddr2. My current system simply doesn't meet the hardware requirements of two of my college courses, and the upgrade should allow me to consider upgrading to Vista down the road.

I have been looking around on the internet for a safe, vetted procedure to install the new mainboard without having to completely reinstall windows - I do not have access to a Windows XP SP3 disc of any sort, and my CD burner is dead so even if I could find my sp2 disc, I wouldn't be able to slipstream a new one. Nor do I have access to the installation CDs for my programs at the moment.

I have found several threads on the net that point at using SYSPREP before installing the new mainboard, but I would prefer to have detailed instructions. I have already backed up all of the files I want to keep just in case I do have to reinstall everyhing, but the discs necessary to do that are not accessible right now.

Another problem I noticed is that the new MB only has one IDE channel (and 5 SATA), so I had to buy a new SATA DVD burner since I have two IDE HDD that work just fine. I should probably install the SATA burner first and get it's drivers installed before running SYSPREP right?

 

[crjdriver]

There are no drivers for the sata burner. You simply have to enable the sata AND have the sata controller driver already installed.

Next there is no fool proof method of doing the above. I have a set of instructions I have made however no one can guarantee you that you will be able to swap boards without a clean install. If you want, here are the instructions.

Here is how to swap mb without a clean install OR a repair install. Note I have done this approx 25 times without failure, however there may be an instance where it would not work. Again the clean install is the best way to go.

To swap mb without reinstalling.

1 During this procedure DO NOT reboot, tell it later.

2 With the old board still installed, uninstall any software that is dependent on the old board. This would be things like onboard sound, nic, raid drivers, etc. While you are at it, uninstall anything you do not need or use.

3 Go to device manager and select ide ata / atapi controllers. Right click the primary and go to update driver. Have the wiz display a list of known drivers so you can choose. Choose standard ide controller. Repeat for the secondary. Note this is the most important part if you want the system to boot.

4 While in device manager, remove anything dependent on the old board such as usb controller, floppy controller, etc. If you miss one here, no big deal. The ide controller is the important one.

5 Disable [not uninstall] any anti-virus software so it does not load at boot.If you cannot disable it, then uninstall the AV app.

6 Now shutdown and do the swap.

7 Once the system boots, it will load any native drivers it has. This would be things like floppy controller, usb controller, etc.

8 Now install your chipset / mb drivers; rebooting when prompted.

9 Install any other drivers that the os does not have native drivers for; onboard sound, nic, etc. Do this as necessary.

10 Reinstall your video driver last.

 

[Samaelryn]

Ok, one last thing I forgot... The mainboard only has one slot for a PS/2 connector (keyboard or mouse) and both my keyboard and mouse are USB... Will I be able to use my USB keyboard to enter the BIOS?

 

[crjdriver]

Maybe yes and maybe no. It depends on the default setting for keyboard support. Read your manual and it should tell you.

BTW having a ps2 keyboard around for bios flashing, testing, etc is a very handy thing to have [along with a test power supply]

 

[crjdriver]

One other item. You almost always will have to reactivate the xp install when swapping boards.

 

[Samaelryn]

Ok, I've got the system up and running... some.

Had to run a repair install, and during that the install program could not find the file dpnet.dll to copy. Now the computer is rebooting itself after a few minutes of up time if I don't run in Safe Mode... though SM hasn't crashed once yet. (I'm in SM w/ networking right now.)

What kind of information do I need to post to get help stabilizing my system, and how do I get it to post here?

Also, when I installed the graphics drivers for the onboard GPU (downloaded directly from NVidia's website), I could only display in 4-bit 640x480 resolution... But using the default driver XP installed after I uninstalled the Nvidia one works fine. Any thoughts on how I can make full use of the onboard gpu? I've already installed all of the drivers that came with the mainboard.

And apparently the computer isn't detecting the onboard sound either.

 

[crjdriver]

It sounds like you are going to have to do either a repair install or a clean install. I would think you are having a driver conflict between an old driver for the other board and the new hardware/driver.

 

[Samaelryn]

Yep. Some of the old VIA drivers got left on the computer before the swap (thought I'd gotten them all, nasty little buggers.)

I've had a friend back up the hard drive, and am in the process of doing a clean install of Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit. Next time.. Going to get myself into the habit of doing clean installs on a yearly basis... soon as I can Slipstream an install disc that will have all the drivers on it I need and whatnot.