Barebones system and old HD's

Hi all
Very excited to FINALLY have order a new computer after 7 years

Gigabyte Barebones w/ AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2.2GHz) (Socket AM2)
GIGABYTE GA-M61VME-S2 Socket AM2 MCP61V DDR2 A&V&L MATX Motherboard
ATi Radeon X1650XT 256MB PCI Express Video Card

I thought I had posted a question like this before but I couldn't find it. Maybe it was somewhere else. Anyways, I want to use my old hd's in the new box.

Do I need to do a complete reinstall or a repair install of XP or neither. I have a system partition "C" so if I have to do a full reinstall I should only have a few things to back up.

Also, I have a XP SP2 disks from last fall and there has been a bunch of updates since then. Iam on dialup and would hate to have to download those updates. Would I/ do I "slipstream XP" on to some CDs?

Thanks
Heath

 

Thanks Pete C
Good I think I can probably handle a repair install.

Yeah, its a standalone SP2 CD from last fall. Iam up to date, but there has been tons of updates since then can I copy those updates or slipstream them? Iam just not sure which. Or do I need to just DL them again.

Thanks
Heath

 

Well, I guess I'll have to re DL them.
My friend next door has satelite internet so maybe that is an option.

One more question. Will all my programs continue to work properly? There all installed on partition D. Guess Iam worried about the file paths.

oopps...one more question. Will I need to backup the stuff under C:\Documents and Settings\Heath and the other profiles or will the repair install leave those intact?

Thanks a bunch
Heath

 

Thanks Pete C!!

THE system should be here by the end of the week.

Heath

 

Just an update....

The comp finally came and start working on it lastnight. So, I thought I would post my experience.

The repair install worked. Took a few tries but I got it. But, it wasn't as straight forward.
I booted with the cd in. It loads some drivers then will ask if you want to do a repair install press "R" or load windows. At first I typed "r ". It did a few things and asked (sorry but Iam going from memory) to make a selection of what I wanted to repair. The choice was 1. c:/windows>
I selected one(1) and then it asked for my admin password I hit enter. Then it went back to c:/windows>
It was a dos screen.
So, by now Iam freaking. So, I restarted it.
At that first screen instaed on typing "r" I selected to install windows normally. It did a few more things. It came to a screen asking if I wanted to "repair" or install. I selected repair and it worked perfectly. Copied drivers and all that .
So, it seemed a little wacky and seemed like there are two different "repairs "!!??

my experience
H

 

How old are your hard drives Heath? Really old drives will stop you getting the best from your new machine.
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/perf/meas.htm

 

The maxtor is like 1 1/2 old. 80gig.
But, I kind of messed up. The new MB has only one IDE plug so I can only plug one HD and a CDrom. So, I think Iam going to set up a RAID config in a couple weeks(I have no idea how! or what I need) then I can use the ide plug for my cdrom and cdrw. Minor set back but, its a tight little board so Iam happy.

Thats why I need to only read one "How to" article. Too much info always gets lost in my head.

Thanks
Heath

 

Don't use the old harddrives for os use
Only if they are used for storeage
Newer hard drives are much faster - simple as that
Why buy a new fast system and hobble it
Reliability as well is an issue.
Even if hard drives were not cheap - why bother both from speed , reliabilty amd cost .

 

A 1 1/2 year old PATA harddrive is not old. I have been running 5 year old Western Digital Caviar PATA harddrives on my system with 2MB cache. I just recently added an 80GB WD Caviar PATA harddrive with 8MB cache. I see no difference in performance. S.M.A.R.T. reports all drives are fine. Data Lifeguard reports all drives are fine. Heck I still have PATA drives from 1996 that still function fine.

 

So, 20 minutes after writing that post above, everything came to a screeching halt!!
I wasn't able to update windows so I followed this article at windows update and it royally ******* my comp!!
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919749/en-us
Now, I know I was having problems figuring out where the spaces went. I think what happened was it deleted abunch of system files. I was getting popups from "windows File protection" and I couldn't stop it. So, I did a hard shut down and when it rebooted it was missing the hal.dll file.

on top of that, either the cdrom is going bad or the HD going bad or maybe even a loose connection but when I tried to bootup with the cd it said mountmgr.sys is corrupt or missing. I would restart and then another file was missing or corrupt.

Thankfully, I have several HD and was able to get the OS installed on one of them and was able to pull off 12 gigs of my kid pictures, videos and the like.

So, after getting my info saved I checked the disks for errors ran chkdsk and it said that HD was "healthy ". So, I tried again to get the OS on it. First time got a mountmgr.sys file missing or corrupt. I restarted. Second time, had another file that was missing or corrupt. It restared and start to install the os on the third try.

But, its working now.

My mother inlaw, who is a super geek, and I was phoning to get advice and to vent got me a 400gig sata drive. Its going to ROCK!!
yeah, I have a sata2 connection.
And just purchased 2 gigs pc2 6400 RAM modules!! That will run in dual channel mode, yeah baby!!

Anyways, sorry for venting and bragging.

Heath