experiences with Win2K finding itself in a new mainboard?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike245
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Mike245

I'm considering replacing my mainboard/CPU because much faster equipment
has gotten so much cheaper. Everything else in this box has been
replaced and the main bottle-neck is CPU and RAM speeds. I really don't
want to do a full re-install of everything from scratch either. Has
anyone put a HD with Win2K on it on another mainboard and had it work?
Am I being too optimistic thinking I might not have to reinstall?

All I will be changing is the mainboard/CPU, all other peripherals,
cards, drives, etc will be coming along. I'm thinking sticking with the
same manufacturer might help. I have a VIA chipset with a Duron in
there, perhaps a VIA with an Athlon would cause less headaches?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Yes I have tried this, at best sometimes it works. Typically I think you
want a similar chipset. Because if it is completely differing you get a
BSOD. But i am not entirely sure about that. I just know that sometimes
when I have done it it worked, and others it didn't it just BSOD when
booting into windows.
 
Chris Stolworthy said:
Yes I have tried this, at best sometimes it works. Typically I think you
want a similar chipset. Because if it is completely differing you get a
BSOD. But i am not entirely sure about that. I just know that sometimes
when I have done it it worked, and others it didn't it just BSOD when
booting into windows.
Click to expand...
What is a BSOD?
 
clarky said:
What is a BSOD?
Click to expand...

the Blue Screen Of Death
Abbreviated BSOD, an error that can appear on computers running in a Windows
environment. This includes even the earliest versions of Windows, such as
Windows 3.0 and 3.1, and still occurs in later versions such as Microsoft
Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000. Jokingly called the
blue screen of death because when the error occurs, the screen turns blue,
and the computer almost always freezes and requires rebooting.
 
Mike245 said:
I'm considering replacing my mainboard/CPU because much faster equipment
has gotten so much cheaper. Everything else in this box has been
replaced and the main bottle-neck is CPU and RAM speeds. I really don't
want to do a full re-install of everything from scratch either. Has
anyone put a HD with Win2K on it on another mainboard and had it work?
Am I being too optimistic thinking I might not have to reinstall?

All I will be changing is the mainboard/CPU, all other peripherals,
cards, drives, etc will be coming along. I'm thinking sticking with the
same manufacturer might help. I have a VIA chipset with a Duron in
there, perhaps a VIA with an Athlon would cause less headaches?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Generally a win 2k installation will only run on the system configuration
upon which it was built.
In my experience connecting a win 2k system built on a PIII 700 to identical
system except cpu is PIII 800 will not run.
Colin
 
I'm considering replacing my mainboard/CPU because much faster equipment
has gotten so much cheaper. Everything else in this box has been
replaced and the main bottle-neck is CPU and RAM speeds. I really don't
want to do a full re-install of everything from scratch either. Has
anyone put a HD with Win2K on it on another mainboard and had it work?
Am I being too optimistic thinking I might not have to reinstall?

All I will be changing is the mainboard/CPU, all other peripherals,
cards, drives, etc will be coming along. I'm thinking sticking with the
same manufacturer might help. I have a VIA chipset with a Duron in
there, perhaps a VIA with an Athlon would cause less headaches?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

You will have to do a repair install for this significantly newer
motherboard, even if from same chipset manufacturer.
 
Reformat the harddrive and do a fresh install of Win2000 if you don't want
to suffer nasty Registry errors from now on.
 
Mike245 said:
I'm considering replacing my mainboard/CPU because much faster equipment
has gotten so much cheaper. Everything else in this box has been
replaced and the main bottle-neck is CPU and RAM speeds. I really don't
want to do a full re-install of everything from scratch either. Has
anyone put a HD with Win2K on it on another mainboard and had it work?
Am I being too optimistic thinking I might not have to reinstall?

All I will be changing is the mainboard/CPU, all other peripherals,
cards, drives, etc will be coming along. I'm thinking sticking with the
same manufacturer might help. I have a VIA chipset with a Duron in
there, perhaps a VIA with an Athlon would cause less headaches?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
After trying it. It sometimes helps to uninstall everything not
needed(drivers, programs,expansion cards, etc) before making the
switch. One switch I did on a dual boot win2k/win98SE computer
because the motherboard died so I didn't have time to uninstall
drivers. Win2k took the switch well (Intel P3 to a AMD XP), However
win98SE was bad. At first it would bootup and windows would try to
detect new hardware and in would lockup. In safe mode I uninstalled
the drivers reboot an win98 would start but the cd-rom drives
disappeared. Lots of other problem's but in short I ended up booting
into win2k and just deleting the windows directory and reinstalling.
 
jamotto said:
After trying it. It sometimes helps to uninstall everything not
needed(drivers, programs,expansion cards, etc) before making the
switch. One switch I did on a dual boot win2k/win98SE computer
Click to expand...

Are there motherboard drivers I should be uninstalling prior to the change?
 
I'm considering replacing my mainboard/CPU because much faster equipment
has gotten so much cheaper. Everything else in this box has been
replaced and the main bottle-neck is CPU and RAM speeds. I really don't
want to do a full re-install of everything from scratch either. Has
anyone put a HD with Win2K on it on another mainboard and had it work?
Am I being too optimistic thinking I might not have to reinstall?

All I will be changing is the mainboard/CPU, all other peripherals,
cards, drives, etc will be coming along. I'm thinking sticking with the
same manufacturer might help. I have a VIA chipset with a Duron in
there, perhaps a VIA with an Athlon would cause less headaches?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

Just did that. I had a dual boot Win2K/WinME system. I Upgraded from
an older ABIT VIA 133 based board to a new ASUS VIA 400 based board.
Excluding some confusion over a failing hard drive that the old MB
accepted but the new MB rejected:

On the initial boot, Win2K just detected some new hardware and
automatically installed the drivers - didn't even ask for the Win2K
CD. Then I loaded in the new Motherboard CD and installed the drivers
from it to get the on board LAN, audio, etc working. No problems at
all.

WinME was a nightmare. I had so many problems that I finally went into
safe mode and deleted everything from device manager and rebooted -
and rebooted - and rebooted ..... Still had problems so I went into
the registry and deleted the ENUM section. Several reboots later, it
was finally at least running. I loaded the new motherboard CD and
started installing drivers. That went OK until I got to the VIA 4-in-1
driver. It hung during 4-in-1 install. After that, I got multiple
CMDNINST errors with boots to a blank blue screen. I went into safe
mode and did a system restore to a point just before starting the
upgrade. For some reason - I guess all the right drivers were on the
disk or something - after several reboots, it was running OK. I
retried loading drivers from the motherboard CD drivers and finally,
had everything working. Looking back, it probably would have been
easier to reinstall WinME.
 
... I went into
the registry and deleted the ENUM section.
Click to expand...

Looking back, it probably would have been
easier to reinstall WinME.
Click to expand...

It's pretty easy on WinME too, you just have to delete the ENUM key
initially for smoothest sailing, then after a reboot or two go into
Device Manager and delete the duplicate entries, that is, when there
are duplicates of something and one has an exclamation mark, delete
the one without the exclamation mark... that "usually" works, though
every now and then you'll need to delete both duplicate entries,
though sound can still be problematic, particularly the cheaper sound
solutions with poor drivers, but then a cheap replacement sound card
for $10 might be worth the time savings


Dave
 
Mike245 said:
Are there motherboard drivers I should be uninstalling prior to the change?
Click to expand...

If it has the 4in1 drivers you can uninstall them.

To be on the safe side though you want to have a working set of all
four Win2k setup disks. You can get them here if you don't have them
http://www.bootdisk.com/. Then you can do the repair option.
 
Mike245 said:
I'm considering replacing my mainboard/CPU because much faster equipment
has gotten so much cheaper. Everything else in this box has been
replaced and the main bottle-neck is CPU and RAM speeds. I really don't
want to do a full re-install of everything from scratch either. Has
anyone put a HD with Win2K on it on another mainboard and had it work?
Am I being too optimistic thinking I might not have to reinstall?

All I will be changing is the mainboard/CPU, all other peripherals,
cards, drives, etc will be coming along. I'm thinking sticking with the
same manufacturer might help. I have a VIA chipset with a Duron in
there, perhaps a VIA with an Athlon would cause less headaches?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

You will probably find these helpful:

How to Replace the Motherboard on a Computer That Is Running Windows 2000 or
Windows Server 2003

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;824125

How to Move a Windows 2000 Installation to Different Hardware

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;249694

How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade of Windows 2000

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;292175

What an In-Place Windows 2000 Upgrade Changes and What It Does Not Change

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306952
 
You will probably find these helpful:

How to Replace the Motherboard on a Computer That Is Running Windows
2000 or Windows Server 2003

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;824125

How to Move a Windows 2000 Installation to Different Hardware

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;249694

How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade of Windows 2000

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;292175

What an In-Place Windows 2000 Upgrade Changes and What It Does Not
Change

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306952
Click to expand...


Just replaced my motherboard. Used my old Hard drive only from the old
system as my new motherboard had built in sound,video, lan, etc. Initially
the computer could not boot to the hard drive. I simply booted up to the
W2k CD and did a Repair W2k. It repaired the hard drive boot sector to
allow me use the old hard drive with all the info intact.

Regards
 
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