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Problem Putting Old Hard Drive in New System-New Problem

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oldbutdumb

Member
🙁I have not been able to get past posting when I tried to use my wifes existing W98 SE system on a Western Digital 80 gig hard drive in a new case with a new (Shuttle)mb and AMD xp-2500 mobile cpu and pc3200 DDR mem. I had tried to use my newer ATI Radeon 7200 vid card instead of her Diamond Stealth 64 (PCI) card. The original board was a Tyan with AMD K-6 350 CPU. I never could get through posting and nothing on the monitor. I had been using a Promise Ultra 100 Controller card with the drive so I put that back in. I tried a replacement monitor and put in her original vid card but no luck. Eventually I removed all connections from the board and just connected the mouse, keyboard and video card. It still wouldn't post so I RMA'd it and got a MSI K7N2 Delta2 which got good reviews at Newegg. Now I want to start over am hoping someone here can give me the pitfalls connecting a drive with w98 and stuff on it to a new system.
 
If you're trying to just dump an older hard drive with Win98 already installed on a new motherboard, you're going to have problems.

What I would do is this:

Install it back in the older system (old motherboard). Boot up with all of it's old devices, as normal.

Now, open up the Windows 98 registry.

Start RegEdit (Start-Run-Regedit), and delete the following registry folder (and all subfolders under it): HKEY LOCAL MACHINE|Enum

Expand the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE branch in the left pane. Right click on the Enum key under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and pick delete.

Now, immediately close Regedit and shutdown the pc.

What this does is delete all "installed device info" in Windows 98's registry. So, when you boot up again, it will re-detect all your new devices as if it were a fresh install.

Now, before you delete the Enum key, you might want to use regedit and "export" that key somewhere to keep as a backup. Just name it "enum.reg". This way, if there's any problem, you can at least have the key backed-up.

Ok, so you've deleted the Enum key. Now, swap your drive out to the new system.
You shouldn't need the Promise controller now. Don't use it.

Windows will redetect your devices. Some devices, like your modem, etc. will be detected, and windows will say it needs drivers for them. Normally, all you have to do is point the driver locator to your "Windows\System" folder. Or, just "Windows". Occasionally, the system32 subfolder. It may find one file, then say it can't find another.
Just point it back and forth between the Windows folder or the windows\system folder, for starters.

Or, if that gets to be too much, just cancel out of the detection for that device and reinstall the drivers separately later.

 
Thanks Slikkster! I am printing your instructions now so I do it right. I'll let you know how this turns out after I get the original parts together and running.
 
Ok, but once you delete the ENUM key, do NOT reboot the computer in the old system!
Otherwise, it will hose things up.

Just delete the key. Close Regedit. Shutdown old pc. Take out hard drive. Move it to new pc. Follow previous instructions.
 
🙁I looked for my old motherboard and realized that I left it in the AT case when I sold it for scrap!! Now I'm asking if the HD can somehow be activated with a new MB. In other words must I loose all the files on the HD by formatting it during bootup?
 
What you are trying to do is possible... but not a good idea. You will have problems, not to mention a hard drive already full of crap. A format and fresh install is a good idea with a motherboard swap. Why don't you just stick the drive on a cable in another pc and save your files then format and load windows fresh?
 
Do you mean I can stick this drive as a slave on my main computer even though it is running WinXP not Win98 SE that is on the drive?
 
yes you can, it wont show as drive c in my computer, as your master drive will have that title. it will appear as another drive name. just backup your data and reformat and do a fresh install
 
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