Installing new motherboard..what to do?

[jmoore2001]

Ok I've been having this conversation with someone on what to properly do when you install a new motherboard.
I said that if you get a new motherboard you need to reformat or else you'd get BSOD's, but after you format everything would be fine..

this girl i'm talking to said this:

if you switch mobos and they have the same chipset, no reinstallation or anything.

besides, usually all you have to do is fdisk the master boot record not reinstall and the new motherboard will rebuild, but if you have ntfs, yer screwed.
I would NEVER rewrite a drive and format and repartition in a new chipset WITHOUT doing this first. If you haven't been, shame on you. The current MBR is not written at all by the OS. If you switch a drive and let the os write the drive you still have the same master boot record.

You're **** until you kill it.

Your lack of doing this will cause performance problems and (in practice) some systems wont be able to see the drive until you do it.
So installation would be impossible.

basically she just says you dont have to format at all, just delete the mbr. i, for one have NEVER heard of this...so who's wrong here?





jmoore2001, do not remove moderator's comment even if you didn't mean to violate the forums' rules!!
KK

[Bill in SD, CA]

Uhhh ......................... think you need a "little" edit in the quote there.

Bill

[jmoore2001]

oh, sorry for quoting vulgar language!

[Bill in SD, CA]

CHANGING MOTHERBOARDS AND KEEPING WINDOWS

Bill

[John Prophet]

she is wrong.

(the mbr has nothing to do with swapping a motherboard AFAIK)

with w98se or WinME you could boot into safe mode after installing the new motherboard..then run "regedit" and delete the "hkey local machine/enum" folder...then reboot and let it start redetecting stuff....try not to reboot when it asks..just let it keep detecting stuff etc. It will detect some stuff twice like the keyboard etc so you have to do a little cleaning up afterward by deleting the doubled entries from device manager andletting it redetect those things again.

In xp it is basically installing the new motherboard..then dont even bother trying to boot because it'll blue screen on you...instead boot off the cd and just do a "repair" install. Just go thru like you are installing windows...it will search for and find your current windows install and then give you an option to "repair" that install. So obviously you wouldnt format.


JP

[jmoore2001]

so does anyone agree with what she said? i really dont know where she got that information...she told me to look it up, lol.

[Dooin' it]

Just be aware of situations like the one I went thru this week..........

(Did the Hkey\localmachine\enum trick) Got everything where it was supposed to be except for sound & (later I learned) LAN. Here was my situation.......

SiS chipset to Via chipset mobo swap. Using WinME (maybe the prob in itself?) and no matter how many tricks I tried, I couldn't get the sound to work. No way......no how!!

Used a little 5GB HD I had layin' around and did a fresh WinME install on it and everything was fine. So, I knew sound was OK, it was just driver conflict leftover from the old mobo. I still don't know what I could have done to fix it, but the guy was still happy. I backed up his documents & did most of the reinstallation of the stuff that was on it before (printer, Office, Zip, Acrobat, etc. etc.)

Anyway, just be aware!! BTW, thanks JP for all your help. I was sooooo close to being there, just couldn't get the last 1%!!!! (Guy's still happy though!)

[excuzzzeme]

Originally posted by John Prophet
she is wrong................................

In xp it is basically installing the new motherboard..then dont even bother trying to boot because it'll blue screen on you...instead boot off the cd and just do a "repair" install. Just go thru like you are installing windows...it will search for and find your current windows install and then give you an option to "repair" that install. So obviously you wouldnt format.


JP

Does this method apply only to those machines using FAT32 or will it also work on an NTFS system? As I understand it, by changing mobo (diff chipset) you have crossed the barrier of seven devices. Please clarify if poss. thnx

[John Prophet]

I dont think fat or ntfs matters here at all.

As far as reactivation isnt that just a phone call?

[excuzzzeme]

Thnx JP. Am going to put this to the test as it may solve a problem I'm looking at or at least save time. If I am ble to test it will let you know of outcome.