Upgraded motherboard, programs no longer found

I finally went and upgraded my motherboard from a Pentium III 450 Mhz to a Pentium IV 2.4 Ghz. I kept my Win 2k hard drive in the system (after backing up of course).

Upon bootup of the upgraded system, the vertical bars went across the bottom of the screen to indicate that Windows was starting to load. Immediately after that, the blue screen of death appears and tells me that my boot drive was missing or corrupted. I did expect some problems with a new motherboard but I certainly thought the bootup would at least go a little farther.

Anyway, I installed Win 2k over the old files without formatting. What I have appears to be a fresh install but with my old files still intact. One problem is that I can't get my old desktop to show up. It's in the Application Data in Documents & Settings under my original user name. Also, all of the programs I installed before the upgrade are no longer installed, even though their files are still seen under Program Files.

Anyone know how to upgrade a motherboard and reinstall enough of the operating system to get it running, without having to reinstall every application program?

Thanks,
Larry

 

Sounds like you did a frsh install instead of a repair install.

 

Repair install is what I tried before doing the fresh install over existing files. There were a couple of options such as Quick Repair, Manual Repair, and maybe another one. I tried them all and the blue screen still came up each time at bootup.

Then I tried the fresh install which boots up OK, but I can't run my programs because it says they are not installed.

-- Larry

 

I just located a webpage that explains the exact problem I'm having, and how to fix it. There must have been a conflict with an existing mass storage driver intended for the older system.

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/install/other/motherboard/win2k.htm

There's also a Microsoft Knowledge Base article on the problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q249694

Looks like I have a couple of options, the easiest of which would be to delete all Win 2000 drivers in Device Manager before transferring the hard drive to the new system. Then, theoretically, Win 2000 should detect the new devices at bootup and then install (or ask for) new drivers for the upgraded system.

I'll try this over the weekend and report on the results.

-- Larry

 

Good Post! I'm fixing to upgrade to an entirely new box and move my HD. I've tried this before and have had to reinstall everything . Very timely for me!

Thanks
Top Dog

 

Okay it's done, here's what happened...

Forget about simple fixes. However, it's possible to move your drive to a better box if you do it properly.

First, do a complete backup of your hard drive. You'll probably end up restoring it back to the old system at least a couple of times until everything is right.

Then, BEFORE you move the drive, make sure you uninstall Norton Utilities, Systemworks, or Antivirus if you use any of those programs. If you don't uninstall them prior to the move, they will not run properly on your new system and they will refuse to uninstall completely from there. You cannot take a shortcut by reinstalling over the original version because Norton checks if the program is present and refuses to install until it's removed. But it can't be removed on the new system... so uninstall it before the move and reinstall it after the move.

That procedure may also apply to some other programs on your particular system. I use Nero CD burning software and it has the same problem, and similarly for the freeware program SmartFTP that does file transfers. Most of my programs did run on the new system without having to uninstall them before the move, but a few often-used ones did not and that's why it's important to have a restorable backup to take you back to the old machine.

Next step...

After moving the drive to the new box, boot from the Windows 2000 installation CD. Do NOT boot from the hard drive at this point. It will take a few minutes to inventory your new system's devices and then a screen will show up with options to install Windows or do a repair. Choose INSTALL. (I found that choosing REPAIR here does absolutely nothing beneficial.)

It will take a few minutes to copy more files from the CD, then the system will reboot. At this point, let the system boot from the hard drive and it will continue copying files from the CD. A few more minutes go by and you will be presented with another choice: Repair the existing Windows installation or Install a new copy of Windows over the old. Choose REPAIR. (This is a different Repair from the one described in the last paragraph.)

Once it gets through the repair phase, you'll be instructed to remove the CD and click on Finish to reboot. This should be the end of the system upgrade process. Now you can reinstall programs you removed from the old system. Make sure to test all software to be sure it runs properly. If any program pops up an Install window when you try to run it, the program needs to be removed while still in the old system and probably can't be uninstalled once it's in the new box. That's when you restore back the old machine, uninstall the program that produced the message, and start the upgrade all over again.

Above all, be sure to keep that backup of your original system for at least a few days after the new one is running and well-tested. Make doubly sure not to accidentally blow away the backup if (and when) you need to restore and do more work. I recommend making two identical backups before upgrading, just to be safe.

Good luck, Dog. Let us know how the upgrade works for you.

-- Larry

 

One more thing... the Windows 2000 CD will ask for the 25-character security code that's printed on the wrapper, or the install will not finish. Make sure you're ready to enter it when asked.

-- Larry

 

Well, I built a new box and moved my well tweaked 80 gig HD with Win2k SP3 into the box and did the 'wait until the second listed repair option' on my newly slipstreamed SP3 CD. It worked marvelously with the only 'casualty' being OfficeXP wanting to be reauthorized. (oXP evidently noticed too many changes in the hardware!) This was a great posting for me and gave me a welcome insight into the mysterious MS Op system installation routine. Thanks guys!
Top Dog

 

One thing to be aware of when using this approach is that what happens is that all system files are set back to the versions which are on the installation CD-ROM, which means that if you have a "first-generation" Windows 2000 (no SP's) CD-ROM, you will have to reinstall the latest Service Pack and later hotfixes in order to get an up-to-date and secure system.

This is not as much of a hassle when you have a slipstreamed SP3 CD-ROM such as Top Dog mentions, then you only need to check for any hotfixes.

 

Good point, Laage... the first sign of this was when I noticed the spash screens for Internet Explorer 5 and Outlook Express 5, instead of 6. Not noticing this at first, I applied Windows' automatic updates after my system upgrade, and the IE6 service packs actually got applied to IE5. This resulted in an IE5 splash screen with version 6.00 showing in the About window. Also, there were no uninstall entries for any version Internet Explorer in Add/Remove Programs.

My only way out of this was to do the same repair process again from the Win 2000 CD, then download the Internet Explorer 6 setup files from M$'s website. I also had to download the High Encryption Service Pack to change the cypher strengh from 56 to 128 bits. After applying the two downloads, everything looks fine.

-- Larry