Do I do anything to windows for first use of new motherboard?

[tk1780]

I just bought a new motherboard and want to install it. It's an Asus A7n8x-x.

I can connect everything.

What I am not sure about is what changes to the software do I make ahead of time.

1. Do I install the drivers for the new board while the computer is running with the old board?

2. Do I just install the new mb and windows will detect all of the changes?

3. If I do nothing will the new mb boot?

Thank you for your help

[John Prophet]

If its windows xp or 2000 I think you are basically going to have to reinstall windows.

If its windows98 or ME, basically you can just shutdown....install the motherboard....boot up....go straight into BIOS and set whatever needs to be set there and make sure everything is ok....then boot into SAFE MODE....if you try to just throw the motherboard in and boot to windows..it probably wont work....you have to go into SAFE MODE..then run "regedit" and delete the "hkey local machine/enum" folder..just delete the whole folder.....then reboot into windows.

Deleting the "enum" folder makes windows re-detect all of your hardware....so its almost like a half install, lol..it takes a while and several reboots....some stuff might get detected twice, like keyboard and display adapter maybe..the stuff that gets detected twice, just delete BOTH from the device manager and reboot, itll detect just one and youll be good to go.

Then of course its motherboard drivers etc.

JP

[tk1780]

It's windows 98. So I'll do the regedit route.

Thanks

[John Prophet]

yeah, its doable that way...doesnt ALWAYS work....but usually it does...and when it starts asking for reboots you dont HAVE to reboot everytime...but since youve deleted ALL the hardware....you have to reboot enough to get stuff like IDE controllers in case you have a cdrom with some drivers on a disk etc.....save yourself some headache and go ahead and copy the win98 folder off of the windows CD BEFORE you delete all the hardware...that way when it asks for the windows disk..just point it to the win98 folder on the hard drive....thall save a lot of trouble.

JP

[osprey4]

I've done this with 98. It freaked out the first time I rebooted after installing the motherboard. After installing all the drivers, everything seemed OK, but I had an ongoing problem with my sound card and joystick port that I was never able to solve. Some time later, I flashed the BIOS and everything was fixed for good.

[wallie_x]

Not that I want to steal anyones thread, but how will Windoze 98 work with a fast modern system? It was one of MS's better DOS based offerings, but I can't imagine that it's actually worth having (as a goal) to use it as a primary OS (unless, of course, you want to use it to run older games that were made for DOS). All of my last three machines I swithed to Win XP pro. and after using it for a couple of years, I would never switch back. Since I have no experience running Win 98 with a modern fast machine, my question is will it work well? And it it does, how much of a performance trade off between Win XP an Win 98?
Just curious.

tk1780,
Are there money constraints here? My personal choice is clean install. MS DOS based OS's create a lot of file fragmentation so if you're plan on using the advice from the above members (and please I'm just offering an opinion) I would in the minimal defragment my HD and backup all files I reallly wanted to save, as my first step. And if it was me, I'd reformat the hard drive and go the clean install route. The system will most likely run faster and better with a clean install.

[tk1780]

There are not money constraints per se, but why spend it if you don't have to.

98 is only 4 years old. I use it with at 1700+, DDR etc. and do not have any problems.

Windows can be bloat-ware. I have xp on another machine and it seems slower, not faster.

[John Prophet]

98se seems faster to me.......XP seems bloated (yes, please dont tell me about turning off unneeded services etc, lol)

[wallie_x]

If Win XP is placed on a HD that's formated with the NT file system it can run a little slower, but it does have advantages. It's more stable than a DOS based OS. It does not fragment files so readily as FAT 32, but you can choose to run it on a FAT 32 HD format.
Also Win XP is a memory glutton. It will use a minimal of 128MB just sitting there idling. 512MB is a must if you wish to see the performance that it is capable of. Also, I believe its use of memory allocation is superior to any previous MS OS. You can tweak it better (from my novice point of view of course.) It does run a lot of crap in the back ground, and that is one of the issues of why it seems so slow. And yes John, you can turn a lot of that unnecessary crud off. He's a thread devoted to tweaking Win XP. Maybe you can experiment with your other system and then decide for yourself. But please remember, Win XP needs at least 512MB memory to fly at full speed.
Good Tweaking, wallie_x
HERE!