How to replace motherboard without losing data

[laurenlex]

My motherboard died (Chaintech VNF-250), and I get the new one this afternoon (ASUS K8N Socket 754 NVIDIA nForce3 250). They are different brands, but both S754 NForce 3.

I have not been so good at backing up data, and don't want to lose any recent data from my hard drives when I have to reinstall windows.

My current system drive is an IDE Seagate. I have a SATA drive for other junk. I would like to not lose data on either drive.

1) Will a repair install keep all my data, photos, ect. alive on the old XP Home system drive?

2) Can I just try and boot without a reinstall, back up data, and then do a complete reinstall?

3) How do I get the old CPU out of the socket without breaking anything? I assume the thermal paste will glue the heatsink to the CPU. Can I install the CPU to the motherboard with it glued to the heatsink?

Please give me the best way to do this, and I will give you a :beer: or a Thanks very much.

 

[m1ldslide1]

You'll definately want to do a repair. I don't remember the exact steps, but you boot from you XP CD and tell it to do a repair. This just overwrites the system files and should allow all of your data to remain intact. I've done it twice and it seems to work alright.

As far as the CPU, I don't have a good answer for that. It sucks that the thermal paste is going to act like a glue, and so you just have to carefully release the locking mechanism on the HS and wiggle the HS off the chip. That's what I do anyhow, and I haven't cracked any die yet.

And to be absolutely clear, you CANNOT install the CPU to the new motherboard with the HS attached -- the lever to release the chip is obscured under the heat sinc. Just carefully take it apart and re-paste them together on the new board. You'll need some arctic silver 5 (ordered at newegg or you local compy shop) and I personally prefer to use the arctic silver cleaning solution to remove the old grease before applying the new stuff. You can find a lot of tips on this process on google.

 

[laurenlex]

Thanks. Here's your :BEER

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: laurenlex
My motherboard died (Chaintech VNF-250), and I get the new one this afternoon (ASUS K8N Socket 754 NVIDIA nForce3 250). They are different brands, but both S754 NForce 3.

I have not been so good at backing up data, and don't want to lose any recent data from my hard drives when I have to reinstall windows.

My current system drive is an IDE Seagate. I have a SATA drive for other junk. I would like to not lose data on either drive.

1) Will a repair install keep all my data, photos, ect. alive on the old XP Home system drive?

That's supposed to be exactly what will work the way you want, yes.

2) Can I just try and boot without a reinstall, back up data, and then do a complete reinstall?

No, that's not supposed to be a good idea

3) How do I get the old CPU out of the socket without breaking anything? I assume the thermal paste will glue the heatsink to the CPU. Can I install the CPU to the motherboard with it glued to the heatsink?

"Paste" is a misnomer, unless it is an epoxy, two-part adhesive combined with a thermal transfer compound. It may have dried out and be hard when cold, but if the older MB runs at all, and you can boot it up one last time, the heat of the cpu softens the "paste" and a gentle twisting motion, without lifting upward, should separate the HSF from the cpu.

It's a bad idea to try taking both out at once, because the HSF base covers the socket's latching arm, and you are likely to bend a lot of the pins, which is bad.

With most of the Windows OS versions, the wiset precaution is making one last run in the OS before breaking the system apart, not only for heating up the thermal compound, but for removing all of the old MB's various "devices" from the Device Manager. Remaining in the exact same chip set may obviate most of that preparatory work.

 

[furballi]

Reboot with the new MB. May need the WXP CD to load some drivers. Once in windows, backup/copy important data to another extended logical partition on the same HDD or another HDD. Wipe the C primary active partition and clean install Windows in this partition.

 

[boomerang]

Step by step for a repair install by no less than the people who brought you your OS.

 

[batmanuel]

Actually, if they are both NF3 boards, and if everything else stays the same, you might not have that big of an issue booting up the system once you are finished putting the system back together again, since Windows should see the exact same devices. If anything it'll just reinstall all the drivers over, like when you flash the BIOS and Windows has to go through the whole hardware detection routine again.

I'm willing to bet that all the really critical stuff should be the same between the two boards since they share a common chipset. It's worth a try to see if it'll boot. It's not like you're going to mess anything up that a repair won't fix anyway.