PCA Forums

Being that I'm now getting a slightly faster cpu and newer mobo, I fondly recall the last time I swapped mobos (1.5 yrs ago) trying to keep everything intact on my HDD w/o reformatting and I crashed it (wouldn't boot windows afterwords). I ended up formatting and redoing the whole shootin' match but I later found out that I didn't really need to, there was a way to fix my prior crash. My present mobo is also more complicated (a raid mobo which I don't need) whereas the newer replacement isn't so maybe I won't have any problems (right! )

So, being that I know some of you guys swap mobos and cpus almost weekly and that I'm sure you're not always reformating your HDDs, certainly there must be a preferred safe way to do this w/o crashing, right?

Is your hdd partitioned? If I were using a single drive, I'd have it partitioned and keep all my critical stuff on a non-OS partition just in case things get fubar'd with the swap out. If you're running a RAID array even that approach can get dicey. Even if your using a new mobo with the same RAID controller.

I'd delete all non essential drivers ( sound, NIC, etc.) from the registry, remove the devices ( sound card NIC, modem whatever and hope the OS install just picks up the mobo drivers. Only have what you need to boot on the first install. ( e.g. mobo, agp card, floppy , cdrom etc.) If you're using a VIA board now, it's about a 50/50 shot it will work. Then just reinstall your NIC

Dnload the latest 4 in 1 drivers, IDE miniport, before you swap the mobos and install the PCI latency patch too. That should do it. You can get all that stuff here......

http://www.viahardware.com

What OS you using?

I changed from an epox to a shuttle mobo with zero hassles. Actually had 2 different epox mobo's and then to the shuttle. Still haven't had to format. So what if my system crashes 4-7 times a day.


hehe, j/k

I really expected to format when I went from epox to shuttle. All I did was remove everything in device manager and started up the new system with the basics (just video card) and added the other peripherals back in one at a time. I'd let them install and be sure all is ok, then turn the system off and place in another peripheral.

But I was using winxp and I think using that os make a mobo change much easier.

Some have other ways they do this so hopefully they'll post them.

VidmanII
Now primarily use Win2K (but dual boots Win98SE on another partition yet I could do w/o that OS now as I have other PCs, all running Win2K here anyway) .......so 2 partitions on my primary HD (one that could be redone if need be), no partitions on the second HDD, HDDs are 2 SCSI Cheetah X15s with SCSI controller card which might be tricky, older Via 4 in 1 drivers (like 4.25).

Going from an Abit KT7-Raid (which isn't being used as a raid array HDD setup now) to a Shuttle AK31-A rev 3.1.

X15s !! Jeesh. That's Nexus_7's dept. I think he was running scsi stuff with an AK31-A up until recently. I would think that if your using a PCI scsi controller card that you shouldn't have any problem just moving the controller/hdd's onto the new mobo. Just set the AK31A to boot from SCSI in the BIOS boot sequence and you may just be good to go. There's no o/b RAID on the Shuttle so all you'd have to do is prolly just load optimized or fail safe defaults, disable the o/b sound in integrated peripherals and let her rip!

In the meantime tho, I'd start copying anything critical over to the non-OS HDD just to be safe.

Evil: I've found no reliable way of doing a mobo swap in 2K. Unlike Win98 you can't just wipe the device manager registry entry and let it redetect everything.

Moreover, if the device address of the primary drive on the new mobo is different than the old, Win2K won't even boot past the bootstrap. HOWEVER if you're moving the old SCSI controller over to the new mobo, you probably won't have a problem with this - the address shoudl stay the same.


I'd recommend making a Ghost image of your boot partition first as this may take several tries.

I would go into device manager and manually remove ALL your motherboard devices, the IDE & SCSI controllers, video controller, sound controller and any Nics or modems.

Then shut down, swap the mobo. ONLY install the video card and SCSI cards in the new mobo AND NOTHING ELSE.

Try booting and see if it'll boot into Win2K. If you get a blue screen "boot-partition not found" error you'll have to boot from the Win2K CD and do a boot sector repair.

To do a boot sector repair you may need the driver for the SCSI controller on a floppy. Boot from the Win2K CD and when it asks you to press F6 for additional HDD or SCSI controllers (first prompt) you need to press F6 and have you SCSI controller driver ready and unzipped on a floppy.

When it asks if you want to do a new install or repair, select repair. There will be an option in the repair menu to repair the boot sector (first option). CHECK ONLY THAT OPTION and none of the others.


HOPEFULLY if you can run the sector repair it should let you boot into Win2K. Then you have to pray Win2K properly detects all the mobo devices. Once it does, don't forget to install your motherboard drivers afterwards. Also, I would strongly recommend you FORCE a PnP hardware detection by using the Add/Remove Hardware wizard in Control Panel. Windows does not always properly auto detect all devices after a mobo swap.

After that, add your cards one at a time.

Good luck...

After reading that I'm happy to say that I haven't used win2k! What a pain the a$$ all that sounds like. If I were you, I'd save my important stuff to the 2nd hdd and do a fresh install. Unless of course you want to go thru all that aggravation.

Well, to me it's actually no longer a big deal as I have plenty of spare storage space to copy anything I need ahead of time plus I re-did the Win2K partition not too many months ago so it won't really be too bad if I have to format it again (worst case senerio). It's just time consuming as one sometimes forgets just how much "stuff" (programs, etc) we accumulate and thus need to re-do after a re-install job.
Win2K really isn't bad to work with in any aspect that I've seen so far IMO, wouldn't use anything else now and all 4 PCs here are running it.

Thanks for all the ideas so far. With any luck I won't need to re-format the primary HDD but if all else fails, it'll just mean more time spent.