Changing to a different motherboard in 2k without reloading. Is it possible?

[bgilly]

Lets say I upgrade my current P3-600 setup to an Athlon of some sort, in which case I would of course change the MB, CPU, RAM, etc., etc. I know in Win9x you can go into the registry and remove HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum, and it wipes out the device manager entries, therefore letting you load all your new mobo drivers, along with everything else. Is there an Enum entry somewhere in 2k's registry that I'm just not seeing, or another similar way to go about this? I REALLY don't want to reload the OS when I change hardware, and it's actually a big reason for my not upgrading yet.
Thanks in advance.

 

[hubenshtein]

higly doubt it

 

[Jonathan93]

I know it is possible with Win98... I don't think that Win 2k will be happy about it... You can always try though.

 

[bgilly]

Yeah, I guess I could just ghost my current setup and screw around with it. I just thought I'd ask in case anybody here knew for sure.

 

[tazdevl]

If you have the win2k disc. You can do a reinstall of win2K without reformatting and losing all your programs. Just select the repair menu item when it reboots after loading the installation files. SHAZAM! You're done and don't have to piss away 4 hours of reloading.

The question really is... can you do the same thing with winXP? Have to figure out what to do about XP RC2.

 

[Hardware]

No problem at all just take care of the ide driver!

 

[bgilly]

<< No problem at all just take care of the ide driver! >>


So you are implying that I just throw in the new mobo, boot Win2k, and load the new IDE and chipset drivers? Almost seems too easy.

 

[WebDude]

I've done it a number of times. as I tend to upgrade mb's a lot. Win2k is plug and play, after all. When it's working right, it will just detect the new hardware, ask for drivers (if it doesn't have them), and then reestablish itself. It takes a bit longer when your new mb has a different chipset. Then it really has to do the redetecting of the hardware from the ground up, and you have to reboot a number of times. But in the end it's always worked out for me with no real problems.

WebDude

 

[bgilly]

Hmmm...sounds like a cinch. I'm just always weary of those old chipset drivers lurking in the background trying to slow down my machine. Cause theoretically you could just throw in a new mobo with a different chipset into 9x too, but if you go into safe mode, those old drivers are still there.

 

[Tripleshot]

hooboy,been there ,done that. didn't like it.Now I'll write about it.


You will get the dreaded blue screen of death even the three fingered salute will not clear. W2K will hold on to the motherboard drivers and Hdd controllers until the cows come home. Set boot from cdrom in bios and re install. I have never had good luck trying repair in W2K,so I just re install. It will then detect and write over the old MB drivers.

I think I'll just do that now. I have another Hdd with W2K Pro on it and Athlon drivers. The Athlon died,so now its going into my Intel 933. Much faster,much better. Looking forward to Serious Sam on my ATI radeon 64 meg DDR VIVO . Works sweet on my advanced server. I am seeing detail I have never seen before.

I'm starting to like computing again.