Potential Problems Replacing motherboard

I have a system based around a pc chips m/b ,xp2500 ,512 pc3200.ati 9600pro,windows xp pro, 160gb hd.
My question is can I replace motherboard without having to reload windows or my hard drive.Can I just physically swop it and it will be ok, or do I have to start from the beginning again.(i have alot of files and settings which would take forever to get right again.)

Thanks

 

Read thru this series and see if your answer could be here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20010115/pcsystem-01.html

 

Sorry could not find anything to help here

 

I cannot vouch for doing this with XP as I have not done it YET

But with 98SE I never allowed the first boot to go directly to the HD(s).

I would boot to the Startup Disk and verify that all HD(s) and all partitons of same were recognized along with directorys on same. And also be sure that the CDROMS were picked up correctly.

Once this was done I would check whether I was using onboard or pluggin devices ( such as Video and Audio ) and set the BIOS accordingly.

Then I would reboot to the startup disk. Point to the Win98 folder on the CD and run setup. Or if the setup files were on the HD ( which was my usual case ) point to them and run setup.

This would allow Windows to rebuild itself. It may well be that I just plain LUCKED OUT but I never ran into any real problems or loss of anything. I may have had to do some reinstalling of Drivers etc. but no real problems.

BillyBob

 

I've replaced numberous motherboards while keeping the same hard drive without problems.

Hope this helps.

 

I don't think it will because replacing a motherboard without reinstalling the OS is, as stated above, is a crapshoot.

I accidentally booted after putting in a new mobo but got lucky because both boards used the same Nforce 2 chipset and all devices were found by XP. Even so, I wiped the OS and reinstalled. It's actually easy when you isolate your OS to a certain partition and use Norton Ghost.

I would never try something like this with Win98 though. If you let it try and boot straight to the installed OS, it will bluescreen. I've heard of deleting stuff from the registry before swapping mobos but that failed. Hence, BillyBob's description of an alternate methodology.

I guess I just could have answered.....no.

 

One way that may avoid an "accident ". Before shutting down for the last time on the old motherboard, go to Safe Mode and remove everything in Device Manager. I've only done this once (Win 98SE) and the system is still working, but the "new" motherboard was a bit...mmmm... "sus" when I got it and does some errors occasionally and I can't tell if it is the OS or the motherboard (hey, it was free, can't look a gifthorse in the gob, can you? )

Matt

 

Replacing Motherboard

Thanks for all your Replies.
Bit of a mixture.
backed up existing hd with n\ghost
Swapped Motherboard worked straight away No Problems at all.
Reading some of previous posts whole exercise seems a bit hit and miss.
Now able to o\c my xp 2500 to 3200 with new board.

 

You were lucky. I just replaced my MoBo plus new CPU and memory (required because 168 pin doesn't work well with ddr slots), and both win98 and XP refused to boot and required reinstalling. But that wasn't a big deal; only took a day. Ghost is no help in this situation; made new ghost images with the new epuipment.