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

 

[mechBgon]

It's good to see you picked a very good power supply and RAM 😎 Excellent start 🙂

After you remove the old motherboard, you will want to pop out the I/O shield, which is the rectangular pop-in metal thing that all your ports peek out of (keyboard, mouse, USB, audio, etc), and then pop in the new one that comes with your new board. That could save you one "ooops" step.

Windows is probably going to freak out and need to be reinstalled. Even if it managed to absorb the changes, you would probably still have to re-activate, so the best plan is probably to back up your data and install Windows fresh. Hope that helps, good luck! 🙂

BTW, if you encounter any instability, boost memory voltage to 2.7V using the motherboard's BIOS menus, and maybe relax the memory timings (post if you need specific help with that).

 

[mechBgon]

Also, note the place on your video card where you should plug in a power plug like the one your hard drive takes. And I forgot to say welcome to the Forums, too 😀

 

[sniperruff]

Originally posted by: mechBgon


Windows is probably going to freak out and need to be reinstalled. Even if it managed to absorb the changes, you would probably still have to re-activate, so the best plan is probably to back up your data and install Windows fresh. Hope that helps, good luck! 🙂

he is right. i would do these before you take apart ur old system:
1) backup everything onto one of the HD, then format the drive that you want to be the main OS drive in ur new system
2) plug in and pop in windows CD and reinstall windows. reinstalling windows is a must. besides, nothing beats that new-windows smell ;D

i tried pluggin in an old HD from an old system, leaving windows intact. windows boots OK but then it freeked out when it starts

rememver to clean out ur old case also before you put anything in there too!

 

[everman]

Windows usually doesn't take too kindly to a new mobo. But I've heard of it being done.