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What steps do I need to take to prevent trashing my install of win2k. This is for a client of mine and I cannot have any data loss. I know I need to remove all devices from the "system devices" in the device manager. I thought I heard about somthing more u have tpo do with win2k as opposed to the win9x series. Any help is appreciated and thanks in advance. BTW, if u could respond asap i would appreciate it, as I am scheduled to go over at 12:30. Thanks.


PS
I am removing a C466 on a ZX board to a t-bird 1.3ghz on an A7V with new power supply.

I just did an upgrade on a comp, basically changed everything except the DVD,CDRW and floppy. I used a WesternDigital disk to copy the old 8 gig drive onto the new 40gig drive. After getting the ram voltage cured, it booted right up and installed the necessary drivers. Win2K should do the same. Most people prefer to do a fresh Windows install.

win2k is more of a pain about Mboard/Chipset switches. if you can do a Back up of his data then do a trial...remove all drivers and everything and pray.

Greg

Yeah I removed all drivers and stuff and replaced the mobo and proc and well...i get this happy little blue error from windows stating that the boot device is inaccessible. Oh well. Fresh install cured it.

same thing always happened to me. if you can go back you can try this remove all the old stuff and actually install the New drivers b4 you change everything....that worked once.

Greg

The BIG problem with Win2K/XP is the "Inaccessible boot device" error.

This comes about because Win2K/XP - unlike Win9x - does not use DOS drive letters but the actual device address for the drive.

When you install a new mobo it's important that the boot drive's device address not change.

The problem is, since the advent of ATA100 controllers, the boot device address CAN change. For instance if your old mobo had a seperate EIDE and ATA100 bus and you were using the ATA100 bus for your boot drive, but now the new mobo uses a single combined EIDE/ATA100 bus, then the boot device address will be different. This is because on systems with seperate ATA100 controllers (even if they're onboard) that controller is usually treated as a SCSI controller.

This is why I recommend (ESPECIALLY if the system is mission critical) that when originally setting up the system you buy and install an add-on ATA100 controller like the Promise card (just disable the onboard ATA100 controller). Then if you ever have to change mobos (upgrade or mobo failure) you move the Promise controller over to the new system and the OS will see the boot device in the same address (usually - at least in my experience so far).


Here's what I recommend in your case:

Put some time aside for this - a LOT of time. Like a whole weekend.

First, MAKE A GHOST IMAGE of the boot partition first before swapping mobos! If this doesn't work, and the system is mission critical, at least you can restore it, put the old mobo back and give it back to him until you can deal with it.

ALSO make a repair disk BEFORE swapping mobos.

You're just going to have to try swapping mobos first and PRAY it works. If the current mobo has the boot drive connected to the standard EIDE controller then you should do the same with the new mobo and all SHOULD go well.

If it doesn't then try this:

Boot using the Win2K install CD (or the install floppies). If your new mobo has an ATA100 controller that requires special drivers to be recognized by Win2K (as most do), then you MUST have a copy of those drivers unzipped to A FLOPPY (must be on a floppy since you won't be able to access the hard drive).

First thing the Win2K installer does when it boots is ask you to press a function key (I think F6) if you have a SCSI or other disk controller drivers to install. Hit that key, and it'll prompt you to put the drivers in the floppy drive. It'll install the drivers and continue on.

When you get asked if you want to do an installation or repair, select REPAIR.

When it comes up with a list of repair options, put an X ONLY in the FIRST option (called something like "Repair Boot Sectors"). DO NOT SELECT ANY OTHER REPAIR OPTIONS.

This will (hopefully) setup Win2K to boot properly from the device you just installed drivers for.

If this doesn't work, you're screwed.

yeah I had to do a fresh install. Oh well. Works fine now. Brought the HD home and backed up his documents and data files to a cd so hes all set. That took me all day when I only expected it to take me like 3 hours. Oh well. Thanks anyways guys. Especially you, FP.

Sometimes you just get lucky. I changed yesterday from an epox 8kta3 to a shuttle ak 31 and thought for sure I'd have to format. I just removed all peripherals except the video card and everything went too smooth. Added the other cards back in one at a time. Only problem was getting my modem to install the drivers again. It didn't find the ones already there for some reason. It was a major pain but finally got it installed ok. I use XP, not win 2k though.

I guess I was unfortunate. When I upgraded from a Abit BH6 to a MSI K7T Athlon board I tried everything FP suggested and it would not boot. Kinda weird because I had the drive hooked up at primary master on the onboard IDE controller. Oh well, I got a clean Win2k install out of it.

It's a crap shoot. Something tells me there HAS to be a simple workaround for this, or someone will come out with an app to do it, but right now it's hit or miss.

Now that everyone is migrating to XP I would think that the issue needs to be addressed.

Very interesting......I'm using XP and I have a RAID 0 config on a Hpt370 ata100 PCI controller card. Are you suggesting that having that would be a better scenario than having used the o/b controller in the event I want to someday swap out mobos? I guess my question is , will what you're saying apply to a RAID controller as well as just an ata100 controller? Provided I use the same RAID card of course.

One reason I haven't upgraded to a DDR mobo is that I'm not looking forward to trying migrate a RAID 0 dual boot config. Sounds messy. :lol

when i migrated to a ddr board, i had the promise setup fp mentions - i tried it w/o the promise card - no go - hooked the hdds back to the card - bingo booted right up

So far, every system with the boot drive on an off-motherboard ATA66/100 controller card (doesn't matter if it's RAID or not) that I've changed mobos on has gone smoothly.

My assumption has been that this is because the first PCI hard drive controller detected always has the same device address under Win2K/XP.

For this reason I have always used a seperate controller card on mission critical systems running WinNT or Win2K.

Not to mention the fact that if your ARE using RAID it's a good idea to have an external controller card since RAID arrays usually can't be moved to a different controller intact, even if it uses the same chipset (there's often a difference in the BIOS).