new mobo and existing O.S. possible?

[draboo]

i just ordered a new mobo after fighting with my old one with dead ram slots.

anyway,the old mobo is a epox 8kha(no +) and the new one is a 8rda+.

the hd on this machine is partitioned into thirds.

is it possible to install this mobo and retain the existing win xp o.s. on the C drive? at least till i can transfer all the files of any importance to another partition and do a clean install?

or must i reformat the c drive(c drive is ntfs and the other two are fat 32)and lose all the files?

xp 1500cpu/30 gig wd/256x2 crucial 2100 ddr ram/gf3i200 card

thanks,eh?

brad

[Bob The Great]

The best way to test is to start with the old HD. When you start your PC for the first time though hit the F8 key before windows starts up and get into a safe mode. Now unistall all your drivers that were for the old mobo like any onboard lan or sound. Now restart. It will either work or not. Thats a pretty big step in another direction so XP might not like it. You'll deffinatly have to re WPA it but thats not hard.

[highrock]

well u haven't lost your files yet. it's still on your harddrive. well if your old mobo is unusable then you don't have anything to lose trying it on your new mobo. I don't think it would be a problem because your os is on your harddrive not your mobo. back in the day(when i knew nothing of cpus) i used to switch between two cpu w/ one harddrive w/out a hot swappable device.

[Brainchild]

draboo I put a new MOBO on my system and used the old install,without a problem.I went from an FIC to Chaintech board,but both had identical chipsets.
It's worth a try.

It will perform better on a clean install though

[Bob The Great]

with 95 or above that changed a lot highrock. while possible and done on occasion a switch from a via KT-266 to an nVidia nForce2 might be overwhellming for xp without first removing the drivers of the old board.

another posibbililty would be to just reinstall xp without formatting. Then you will only lose data in the /windows, /documents and settings, and /program files though not all in any of those directories especiially program files.

This will restart windows but leave most files intact.

[highrock]

hmmmm, didn't think of it that way bob. good point. But wouldn't xp tell us that there's issues with some drivers and automatically use default drivers when it confronted them?

[Bob The Great]

well hopefully. The question is wether it will boot in the first place. If it gets into windows your good to go and you just gotta reinstall the drivers like you were saying HighRock. Other wise I'd suggest the safe mode option. Infact just to be safe I'd do the safemode option first so that windows doesn't mess itself up booting. If it detects the hardware changes in the WPA and reinacts the call in then your probably going to have a bit of trouble getting into safe mode to change stuff.

Hey good luck though in doing it! Be sure to update us on the situation Draboo

[draboo]

thanks everyone for the input . all i would like to do is get the "important" files from the c drive to either d or e drive. they are mostly .jpg files,with a few .txt. absolutely nothing that i cant be without,but would like to save if possible.

so booting into safe mode may be an option? will i be able to transfer files in safe mode? i ve never transfered files from one partition to another. can i drag and drop from one partition to another in windows explorer?? that would be cool!

after(hopefully) transferring the files,i would do(yet) another reformat and reinstall of win xp pro.

thanks again,everyone


bradraboo

[Tomteriffic]

Brad, I don't know if this'll work on XP, but one thing I did once was before changing, in Win98Se, I deleted the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Hardware key.

Then I shut down, changed out the mobo, rebooted, canceled out of all the "new hardware found" stuff and loaded the motherboard drivers and other stuff after I got into Winderz. Still took me all evening, though.

[sKiT]

Windows XP should be able to handle it. I've switched mobo manufacturers under XP. It takes many reboots and stability does become a question. If it was my system, I'd go with the fresh intall of another XP image on one of the other partitions. Then copy files from the old image to the new one. then use your current C: drive for storage after you've formatted it. As a gamer, I prefer stability and never do OS upgrades(EX. Win98 to WinXP). The fresh install is Alaways better.