Please Help me avoid upgrade mistake!

[ShaggyBrown]

Hi,
I was hoping some people here could give me advice on the upgrade I?m performing today. I?d like to make sure I avoid as many mistakes as possible.

I?m upgrading my Pentium 3 system to an AMD. I?ll be keeping my two IDE hard drives, DVD drive, CD-RW, mouse, keyboard, etc.

I?ll be installing an Antec True 430 Power supply, ABIT NF7-S NF2 ATX w/ Serial ATA motherboard, AMD Athlon XP-2500 (with 333 FSB, a Barton I believe), Corsair Twin-X (2x256) DDR PC2700, and an ATI 9600 Pro.

This is my plan:
Unplug computer and all cables, remove old Motherboard, remove old power supply, install new power supply, and install new motherboard. The CPU and RAM have already been installed onto the motherboard at the shop, to make sure it POSTs ok. At that point, plug the cables all back in and reboot the system.

I expect that Windows XP pro is going to recognize a lot of new hardware, and so I?ll have to put the CD in and let it install a bunch of stuff. I also expect I may have some further software to install to support to NF2 chipset. Once that is all settled, I?ll remove my NVIDIA GForce 3 drivers, and start to install the ATI card. I hope after two more reboots, I?ll be good to go.

Have I missed anything here? Is this a bad idea? I want to go this route so I can avoid installing Windows again, but if this is impossible, I can re-install. Am I going to run into Windows XP activation problems? I expect to have to reactivate it at least once.

My last question is what the best BIOS settings to use are. I bought a high quality power supply and high quality RAM, I?d like to use that as best I can. At this time, I?m not interested in overclocking though.

Thanks for any advice.

ShaggyBrown

 

[microAmp]

Have I missed anything here? Is this a bad idea? I want to go this route so I can avoid installing Windows again, but if this is impossible, I can re-install. Am I going to run into Windows XP activation problems? I expect to have to reactivate it at least once.

Though what you want to do can be done, I always recommend against it. There will be all sorts of chipset driver junk left over when you make the switch and could cause problems down the road....

If it were me, fresh install of WinXP. As far as activation by WinXP, when was the last time you had to do that? If its been a really long time 1 yr. + You shouldn't have any problems.

 

[alm4rr]

Originally posted by: motoamd

Have I missed anything here? Is this a bad idea? I want to go this route so I can avoid installing Windows again, but if this is impossible, I can re-install. Am I going to run into Windows XP activation problems? I expect to have to reactivate it at least once.

Though what you want to do can be done, I always recommend against it. There will be all sorts of chipset driver junk left over when you make the switch and could cause problems down the road....

If it were me, fresh install of WinXP. As far as activation by WinXP, when was the last time you had to do that? If its been a really long time 1 yr. + You shouldn't have any problems.

ditto - no point in starting xp on shaky ground. On the side, if remember correctly, directly porting 98 to xp (just swappin mobo and no format) will destroy a bios.