Correct procedure for switching motherboards without doing a fresh installation of Windows 2000.

[Jeff7181]

I remember a while back someone saying there was a certain procedure to follow when doing this to avoid incompatabilities with drivers and whatnot. It won't be a drastic change... both chipsets are nForce2 IGP both made by Epox.

Can anyone provide something like a step by step?

 

[Smilin]

1. Backup!
2. Shut down.
3. Swap motherboards.
4. Boot to your OS CD.
5. Press Enter to do a setup then choose to repair your installation a few screens later.
6. Let setup finish and you're done.

Key things to remember:
You do not want a fast or manual repair so don't hit R at the Welcome to Setup screen. You want the "inplace upgrade" repair that comes after pressing Enter to setup.
If you have to press 'L' at any time during the process you have made a wrong selection and are about to wipe something out.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Smilin
1. Backup!
2. Shut down.
3. Swap motherboards.
4. Boot to your OS CD.
5. Press Enter to do a setup then choose to repair your installation a few screens later.
6. Let setup finish and you're done.

Key things to remember:
You do not want a fast or manual repair so don't hit R at the Welcome to Setup screen. You want the "inplace upgrade" repair that comes after pressing Enter to setup.
If you have to press 'L' at any time during the process you have made a wrong selection and are about to wipe something out.

Hmm, that's all? Not what I was thinking of... but sounds like it'll work. Thanks.

 

[redbeard1]

Since they are the same chipset, there is a chance that it would boot without a reinstall. You could try disabling all unneeded devices in the bios, leave out any cards, and then let it go to see what happens.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Smilin
1. Backup!
2. Shut down.
3. Swap motherboards.
4. Boot to your OS CD.
5. Press Enter to do a setup then choose to repair your installation a few screens later.
6. Let setup finish and you're done.

Key things to remember:
You do not want a fast or manual repair so don't hit R at the Welcome to Setup screen. You want the "inplace upgrade" repair that comes after pressing Enter to setup.
If you have to press 'L' at any time during the process you have made a wrong selection and are about to wipe something out.

I thought that for some reason, unlike Win98se and WinXP, the W2K bootable CDs wouldn't do an in-place re-install. At least, my CD won't, it only allows a parallel install.

Could this be dependent on whether the CD you have is a "Full" vs. "Upgrade" edition?

I know that the best way to do a mobo-swap upgrade, for Win98x, was to use Hardware profiles, and prompt Windows to re-detect (as opposed to re-enumerate) hardware, as if it were a fresh install. This would also allow one to switch the HD with the Windows install between two systems (perhaps using a removeable HD caddy assembly). Do you have any idea if such a thing is possible with W2K, using hardware profiles?

 

[Smilin]

This is an inplace upgrade aka repair (not to be confused with a fast repair). An inplace upgrade will preserve all your installed programs and settings.

You can also do an inplace reinstall - just a new installation to the same folder without formatting the filesystem. This typically creates a mess, but you can do it. (You'll have to press the evil "L" key though) A reinstall will not preserve any settings.

Both can be done with an Upgrade or Full version.

I do not believe using hardware profiles to swap between two completely different PCs is really supported. Provided you don't jump HALs and watch your mass storage controllers I suppose you could.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Smilin
I do not believe using hardware profiles to swap between two completely different PCs is really supported. Provided you don't jump HALs and watch your mass storage controllers I suppose you could.

Yes, good point about the HALs and disk controller drivers. It always seemed to me that W2K was a bit more "brittle" with regards to hardware changes than the Win9x OSes were. (And of course, even though XP has a bit better/more flexible PnP and hardware support, it also has the deaded "activation" feature, that kicks in if you upgrade too many hardware categories. I assume that for that reason, that XP's "hardware profile" support is probably near-useless, even if you do keep the same HAL and disk controller drivers, as it would probably bug you to re-activate every time you switched your OS HD between machines. I've never tried it though. Does XP keep track of all of the different "activated" hardware profiles, such that you can go back to a prior one, after re-activating on a different new one? Unless, of course, one has a VLK version...)

One nice thing that I've done, that makes switching systems easier, is to do the initial install of W2K or XP onto a system using a PCI IDE controller card (I prefer a Promise Ultra-something card) using F6 during install, and then migrate that controller along with the OS disk to other systems. That's always worked pretty well for me.