PC evolution from P3V4X -> P4C800 Deluxe

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nic.F
  • Start date Start date
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Nic.F

Hi peeps,

Apologies if this has been covered before, but;

Current system;
Asus P3V4X M/B
Asus Slocket
PIII 1GHz
640MB PC133 Ram
ATI Rage Fury Pro Xpert2000 AGP
Yamaha WF192+ Sound Card
Maxtor 40GB HDD
Eagle Raid PCI adaptor with 2 Maxtor 120GB HDDs not used in RAID mode.
A DVD rom & DVD-RW drive

What I want to do is lift the HDD and Graphics card (might go for an upgrade
on that too) from the P3V4X and drop it onto the P4C800 Deluxe with;
Prescott P4 800MHz fsb 2.8GHz
DDR400 PC3200 Dual channel memory of 512MB

Is this possible without having to reinstal all software. I'm using WinXp +
SP1 as my O/S??

Nic.F
 
I believe that graphics card upgrade may have to be immediate - the AGP slot
on the P4C800 accepts only 0.8 and 1.5 V cards, and the Xpert2000 must be
3.3V (it's AGP 1.0).

As for transferring the hard drive with all its software, it is likely that
you'd have to do a repair install to get the correct drivers:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

"How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP"

(In brief: set the new system's BIOS to boot from the CD drive first. Boot
from the XP CD. Choose to install, rather than going to the repair console.
Under install, choose to repair the existing XP installation, rather than
doing a new install.)

A clean install is, well, cleaner, but it's rather more work.

A repair install may preserve most of your installed applications and
settings, but there are no guarantees. You will need to re-install all of
the Windows Update patches.

A full back up is recommended. Also, I suggest that you download the latest
XP driver for everything. (Asus will give you drivers on the mainboard
installation CD, but there will be newer ones available fro download.)

I'm very fond of my P4P800 board, and I expect that the P4C800 can only be
better. I'm not sure that the Prescott is what I'd choose over a Northwood
at 2.8 GHz, but it ought to be OK. (My own choice was a 2.6GHz Northwood,
which I run at 13X250. I went with an additional 60USD of air cooling to
make it work, of course. I use the 5:4 memory divider, so my PC3200 DDR RAM
runs at its specified frequency.)

Have fun.

Bob Knowlden

Address may be altered. Replace nkbob with bobkn.
 
If you change the motherboard in an XP based computer, you MUST reformat the
harddrive and do a clean install of XP if you want to avoid ongoing nasty
Registry errors.
 
Nic,

Ignore Dave, he always says that and I always put a note under his comments
to this effect.
Dave, please learn about repair installs and if you have trouble doing one,
then feel free to anonymously post to the news group and we will help bring
you up to speed.

Bob's answer is correct.

But, just to re-iterate & I am sure you appreciate this. A fresh install is
always most desireable, but if you have an otherwise clean well maintained
system that is up to date then a repair install is quite fine.

Be careful about installing security patches. Install SP1a first then
update. If at all possible use a firewall while downloading any critical
updates / security patches etc and keep online time to a minimum until you
are up to date. It is quite common for people with EG cable modems to get a
worm (ok the computer gets the worm) while downloading and installing
security patches.

- Tim
 
Thanks Gentlemen, your help and advice is much appreciated. I've done a
repair instal before, so no problem. The PC is always up-to-date, so not
problems there. I have decided to go for a new graphics card as suggested as
I've found 128Mb Asus 9200SETD (D-Sub, DVI, TV-Out) for 35GBP and this will
be fine for my needs. Heh heh, doesn't everyone use a firewall these days?
I'm on Broadband so updates are not a problem, and I have SP1 on disk. I
think I'll download all the up-to-date drivers from ASUS and just drop them
in a directory on the C: drive, so Xp shouldn't have too much of a problem
finding them.
A full rebuild is very nice, but it would take days to reinstal everything
and I'm prepared to put up with the odd problem until Xp catches up again.
All I need now is a quiet P4 psu, as I'm trying to keep all fans to a max of
20ish dB each.
I've got a heatpipe cpu cooler with 92mm fan on which should keep it cool
enough (I've always had problems keeping cpu's cool in the P3V4X, still it's
more reliable than the P3C2000 I started with)

Thanks again guys,

Nic.F
 
Nic,

Ignore Dave, he always says that and I always put a note under his comments
to this effect.
Dave, please learn about repair installs and if you have trouble doing one,
then feel free to anonymously post to the news group and we will help bring
you up to speed.

Bob's answer is correct.

But, just to re-iterate & I am sure you appreciate this. A fresh install is
always most desireable, but if you have an otherwise clean well maintained
system that is up to date then a repair install is quite fine.

Be careful about installing security patches. Install SP1a first then
update. If at all possible use a firewall while downloading any critical
updates / security patches etc and keep online time to a minimum until you
are up to date. It is quite common for people with EG cable modems to get a
worm (ok the computer gets the worm) while downloading and installing
security patches.

- Tim
Click to expand...

I second the ignore dave comment, just do the repair install
 
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