Motherboard/CPU swap to old computer

**lobo_pac** · July 21st, 2004, 05:00 AM

i'm getting ready to put my older ecs mobo and athlon xp 1500+ into my sister's computer that is bogged down. i will eventually feformat her hard drive, but i need to make sure they have recovery disc, etc.

question...> can i just swap out the mobo/cpu and leave everything else intact or do i need to format the hard drive first before installing. like i said, it will be reformatted soon, but i need a week or so before i get to it. i wanted to get her moving along a bit quicker than she already is.

will reinstall win 98 back onto the computer btw.

**proffit** · July 21st, 2004, 05:18 AM

when u do a major upgrade ie mobo u need to reformat! but u could probly get away with leaving it for a weak if u can put up with the whinning from 98.

**Cyclone2** · July 21st, 2004, 03:13 PM

If you have 98 on the H/D now then you may get away with it. XP or 2000 -forget it [99% of the time]

I would suggest before the swap to remove the old mobo drivers and any other peripheral drivers then shut down, swap mobos, then upon restart 98 can find all your new stuff.
hopefully!

**lobo_pac** · July 21st, 2004, 03:16 PM

yeah....i realize it's probably more trouble than it's worth. i'll most likely just have her save all the important files, ill burn them to a cd and then just reformat it and swap mobo and do it that way. thanks for the suggestions.

**night_wolf** · July 21st, 2004, 03:16 PM

yes hopefully...

i myself have never been able to successfully switch a mobo w/o formatting the hdd first

**John Prophet** · July 21st, 2004, 03:19 PM

w98??

just put the new board and cpu in....then upon the first boot go into safe mode...dont even try to boot into regular windows...go straight to safe mode....

then when in safe mode run 'regedit'....then delete the "hkey local machine/enum" folder....just delete the whole folder..then reboot into regular windows....by deleting this folder you are deleting all the hardware entries..so it will have to re-detect all the hardware

it will give a pop up about the display settings blah blah and do you want to run the hardware wizard..which you do

so by running the detect hardware wizard it will detect all the hardware again and after a few reboots etc it will probably be fine....

sometimes what it does is detect stuff twice though....like the keyboard, dma controller etc etc..so when you see stuff doubled in the dev manager you need to delete BOTH of the doubled things and reboot and it will just detect it once etc.

**John Prophet** · July 21st, 2004, 03:20 PM

if it doesnt work, I would think youd be able to just boot off the windows cd and do an install that way, without formatting....

**lobo_pac** · July 21st, 2004, 03:21 PM

thanks for the tips jp. i'll decide if it's worth the hassle or just do a clean sweep. good ideas for the future though if i need to do something similar.

**John Prophet** · July 21st, 2004, 03:25 PM

I have done that procedure a few times..it works usually..sometimes u do get a lot of errors etc after u try it.

with XP you would just boot right from the cd and do a "repair install".....same basic concept..but xp wont even go into safe mode..u have to go straight to the cd to boot

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I have never tried it but it seems like booting straight to the cd on w98 and doing an "over the top" install (no format) would accomplish the same thing