Avoid a fresh install of XP...

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GT

I have finally upgraded my Athlon 2400 system. I've had to do it in steps
for budget reasons, so the new parts are on the way are: e6400, PT880 Ultra
motherboard (using my existing 1.5GB DDR333 and IDE drive for now) and
7600GS (passive / silent) PCI-i graphics card. Not a bad deal for £180 (all
hardly used parts, from ebay).

My question is, are there any clever tricks I can use to avoid re-installing
windows? Perhaps remove all drivers using safe mode, then perform the switch
over and boot to safe mode again?? Or who thinks its not even worth trying -
different HAL etc?
 
GT said:
I have finally upgraded my Athlon 2400 system. I've had to do it in steps
for budget reasons, so the new parts are on the way are: e6400, PT880 Ultra
motherboard (using my existing 1.5GB DDR333 and IDE drive for now) and
7600GS (passive / silent) PCI-i graphics card. Not a bad deal for £180 (all
hardly used parts, from ebay).

My question is, are there any clever tricks I can use to avoid
re-installing windows? Perhaps remove all drivers using safe mode, then
perform the switch over and boot to safe mode again?? Or who thinks its
not even worth trying - different HAL etc?
Click to expand...

IMHO, its Not even worth the time trying..............

I did same as you a year or so back and a few people suggested a repair
install but that just did not work for me.

anyways a clean install is worth its weight in GOLD...............
 
GT said:
I have finally upgraded my Athlon 2400 system. I've had to do it in steps
for budget reasons, so the new parts are on the way are: e6400, PT880 Ultra
motherboard (using my existing 1.5GB DDR333 and IDE drive for now) and
7600GS (passive / silent) PCI-i graphics card. Not a bad deal for £180 (all
hardly used parts, from ebay).

My question is, are there any clever tricks I can use to avoid
re-installing windows? Perhaps remove all drivers using safe mode, then
perform the switch over and boot to safe mode again?? Or who thinks its
not even worth trying - different HAL etc?
Click to expand...

A repair install has worked for some but a fresh install is always best.
 
As the technical pros recommend and I have found out over the years thru
experience that doing a fresh install of the OS after changing the
motherboard is actually a time saver in the long run. The results otherwise
end in a lot of time spent troubleshooting Registry errors and data
corruption.
 
DaveW said:
As the technical pros recommend and I have found out over the years thru
experience that doing a fresh install of the OS after changing the
motherboard is actually a time saver in the long run. The results otherwise
end in a lot of time spent troubleshooting Registry errors and data
corruption.
Click to expand...

I'll add to that: Without the clean install you will always be second
guessing and sort of weird error--some of which might actually be a
result of the repaired installation.
 
GT said:
I have finally upgraded my Athlon 2400 system. I've had to do it in steps
for budget reasons, so the new parts are on the way are: e6400, PT880 Ultra
motherboard (using my existing 1.5GB DDR333 and IDE drive for now) and
7600GS (passive / silent) PCI-i graphics card. Not a bad deal for £180 (all
hardly used parts, from ebay).

My question is, are there any clever tricks I can use to avoid
re-installing windows? Perhaps remove all drivers using safe mode, then
perform the switch over and boot to safe mode again?? Or who thinks its
not even worth trying - different HAL etc?
Click to expand...

I have done this successfully, on at least three occasions, the most recent,
about 5 weeks ago, when I upgraded from an AMD based system, to an Intel
Core2 Duo E6600 with EVGA 680i mb.

Below are the steps I take when doing this:

1: Prior to shutting down system being upgraded, for the last time, remove
the motherboard drivers in add/remove programs.

2: After shutting down and removing power, inserting new
motherboard/hardware, upon initial boot, do NOT let it boot into windows XP.
This is very important. Immediately go into bios, set things like date, make
sure hard drives recognized, etc. While in bios, go into boot order, and set
it to boot from the cd rom first. Insert Windows XP cd rom ( If your XP
Install is SP2, make sure your cd is, if not, you can slipstream it to SP2).

3: Reboot system, pressing a key when prompted, to continue to boot from
cd-rom. Again, most critical, do NOT let the new motherboard boot into it's
existing XP install. Boot from the Windows XP cd rom.

4: Windows XP setup will start from the cd, do not choose automated
recovery, select new install. Next screen, accept the license agreement - it
will find the current install on it's partition, and you will have a choice
when you select it, to do an " R " for repair, or press enter or something
like that, for new install. Choose "R" for repair.

It will then, start to do a repair install of XP on the new motherboard,
which is basically an in place upgrade, installing the proper hal/etc for
the new mb/chipset. Once it does it's thing, it will reboot - at this point,
go ahead and let it reboot into Windows, do not boot from the cd-rom again,
it will finish upgrading XP to the new hardware.
Once done, you will need to go to windows update site, and get all the
updates release since SP2.

I have done this successfully, on at least 3 occasions. All programs remain
intact, and a lot easier than formatting and doing a clean install, which
would require reinstalling all programs, data, etc. This is what I did on
my latest build, app 5 weeks ago, and it went without a hitch - and this
going from an AMD based system to Intel

As always, anything can happen, so I would recommend always having good
backups in case things do go south...


Hope this helps,


Don
 
I have finally upgraded my Athlon 2400 system. I've had to do it in steps
for budget reasons, so the new parts are on the way are: e6400, PT880 Ultra
motherboard (using my existing 1.5GB DDR333 and IDE drive for now) and
7600GS (passive / silent) PCI-i graphics card. Not a bad deal for £180 (all
hardly used parts, from ebay).

My question is, are there any clever tricks I can use to avoid re-installing
windows? Perhaps remove all drivers using safe mode, then perform the switch
over and boot to safe mode again?? Or who thinks its not even worth trying -
different HAL etc?
Click to expand...

There is no reason to believe a repair install or fresh
install is better than a PNP of the same OS install, except
that the PNP of same requires the ability to resolve
problems as you go along, and to boot the system far enough
for it to re-PNP in the first place. If/when the migrated
and re-PNPed installation is finished, it is, umm, finished-
works fine.

The clever trick is not necessarily removing drivers, it's
Googling for the directions to add generic IDE driver files
and registry entries to help it boot far enough to re-PNP.

Make a backup of your present HDD partition (but you were
doing this anyway because it's windws, right?) then you have
the option to gracefully revert back to the present state of
the drive if your attempt fails.
 
I'll add to that: Without the clean install you will always be second
guessing and sort of weird error--some of which might actually be a
result of the repaired installation.
Click to expand...


Not really applicable, I've done tons of migrated
installations without any of these "weird errors".

DaveW is out of his mind though, has falsely repeated
nonsense about registry errors and data corruption without
ever a single piece of supporting evidence.

It's real simple. Can you change a video card on XP? Can
you change a motherboard driver? That's what you're doing.
The first time you install windows it PNPs the hardware.
When you plug in an USB drive, it PNPs the hardware.
Install a new hard drive? PNPs it. Same thing with another
motherboard, you merely have to help it boot far enough to
do so. There is no reason to expect more errors, possibly
even less if the installation was otherwise stable already
as you're presumably starting out with a more mature,
patched version of windows instead of reverting back to the
older, buggier files the reinstall will put back.

It seems a lot of people are just guessing about doing it,
because it's really only a question of whether you can do it
or get stuck and are thus forced to do the repair or clean
install anyway... and determining that doesn't take very
long at all, it is definitely not "a lot of time" as DaveW
write, it takes far more time to do a repair install of the
OS than that saved from not doing so, even when factoring
for an occasional instance where the repair install was
needed anyway.

The thing about windows is wierd errors aren't applicable to
old, no longer existant hardware after the drivers are
uninstalled. It's not voodoo, the procedure is only a
mystery to those who don't do it until completion. Those
who do recognize that IF you can, it is not a problem
afterwards to be second-guessed. I don't claim anyone in
particular can though, first thing it requires is an attempt
to do so, instead of an assumption it can't be done... kinda
like anything else in life.
 
kony said:
It seems a lot of people are just guessing about doing it,
because it's really only a question of whether you can do it
or get stuck and are thus forced to do the repair or clean
install anyway...
Click to expand...

I'll cop to that.
 
no problem just shoving a new mobo in, done it lots of times, works every
time! given the choice, and the time, i would always prefer to do a fresh
install though, as this allows you to clean out all of the crap that you
have accumilated over the months/years since last clean install, allowong
the new/improved pc to run to the best of it's ability.
one thing i have learnt is that often pnp kicks in before cd/dvd drives (new
ide drivers required?!) to save lots of bothe copy the installation cd
(\drivers, or full cd if you want to use manufacturers install routine) to a
folder on the hdd, then all required drivers are there and accessable.
first job for me is to ALWAYS install a/v and firewall, then install
firefox and delete any shortcuts to ie, then put on, then run crapcleaner,
shocking how much there is and nothings happened yet!
 
no problem just shoving a new mobo in, done it lots of times, works every
time! given the choice, and the time, i would always prefer to do a fresh
install though, as this allows you to clean out all of the crap that you
have accumilated over the months/years since last clean install, allowong
the new/improved pc to run to the best of it's ability.
Click to expand...

True, but you could do that even without a different board,
and the flip-side is you have to still ADD the things the
installation lacked, so that's pretty much a wash and takes
longer.

one thing i have learnt is that often pnp kicks in before cd/dvd drives (new
ide drivers required?!) to save lots of bothe copy the installation cd
(\drivers, or full cd if you want to use manufacturers install routine) to a
folder on the hdd, then all required drivers are there and accessable.
first job for me is to ALWAYS install a/v and firewall, then install
firefox and delete any shortcuts to ie, then put on, then run crapcleaner,
shocking how much there is and nothings happened yet!
Click to expand...

Yes, it's very good use of HDD space to put the OS CD
contents on it.
 
kony said:
True, but you could do that even without a different board,
and the flip-side is you have to still ADD the things the
installation lacked, so that's pretty much a wash and takes
longer.



Yes, it's very good use of HDD space to put the OS CD
contents on it.
Click to expand...

the self appreciation society is in action.................
 
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