Moving from nVidia chipset to NForce with WinXP

[JonB]

My son's old motherboard died. It was an ASUS A7V133 and had been very stable.

I bought him an new MSI motherboard with NForce chipset. He is assembling the new pieces at college, so I'm not there to help. On first boot, it POSTed, initially showed the WinXP screen, then reboots. Over and Over.

I'm thinking the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) may need to be re-written to remove all the old VIA chipset drivers. I don't remember the exact sequence to use with the XP install process to rewrite the HAL without losing all the programs and favorites. Should I just have him use the Repair function and hope for the best?

Anyone done this lately? Since I'll be helping over the phone, a step by step list would be great.

Thanks.

I looked for similar threads but was not hugely successful. The main advice was to do a clean install. That is an option, but probably if a "Repair" attempt gets messy.

Thanks. JonB

 

[mechBgon]

Hey JonB, here is my suggestion:

[*]Boot from the WinXP CD and it begins Setup and asks if you want to install WinXP or to Repair. Choose "install" instead of "repair" this first time it asks
[*]WinXP Setup gets its stuff unpacked and inspects the hard drive, sees that there's a WinXP installation in C:\WINDOWS, and asks if you want it Repaired? and this time you say "repair."
[*]WinXP Setup will go through the motions of Windows setup and adopt the new hardware, but doesn't nuke the existing apps/Favorites/data files.[/list]Hope that helps

Wow, you finally changed your signature (somewhat)

 

[JonB]

mechBgon, it worked like a champ for him. He is up and running.

 

[mechBgon]