Q : about upgrading my machine ...

[DeeKnow]

I am upgrading from an old (Pentium 166 MMX) AST machine to an IBM (P3 500 MHz) ...
The new machine does not have a hard disk.

The old machine runs Win98. I am planning to stick with that ... at least for the time being !
What I was hoping to do was to be able to take my 20 GB HD from the old machine and reuse in the IBM.
I understand that Win 98 will have to be reinstalled - all the hardware is now going to be different so I will need all new device drivers etc, different BIOS on the new mobo etc etc.

Is there a better way of doing this than formatting and starting from scratch ?
meaning, is there a way to save current settings, emails, etc ??

Could I for example, boot up the new machine with a floppy and install Win98 (from CD) on the new machine over the previous installation ? will that leave other settings unchanged (except for everything that relates to the hardware) ?

Is there a software that does this sort of thing ?

appreciate any help, tips etc

cheers

Dee

 

[Theslowone]

First off you don't have to reflash your bios, there is a way to do a reg edit in windows where it just sees your devices again, but I am not sure what it is. Do a search on this board, or go to google and search for it there. But if you wanted you could export your emails, and put your docs in another folder, and deltree or delete windows and program files.

 

[4824guy]

You should be able to take and move the win98 HD to the new PC and it should work. You will be asked to load new drivers for the new components and all that afterwards. But your best bet, to have a stable PC, is to do a clean install of the OS and install your software after that.



BUt, as Theslowone said, there is a trick for moving the HD to a new mobo by editing the HD in the old pc just before shutting down. Here is a guide of that info---
here

 

[FPSguy]

I recently moved a Windows 98 hard drive from a PII machine to an Athlon machine and had almost no problems. I didn't even do the registry trick (which looks like a good trick and I would do it if I were you) -- Windows just recognized that it was in a new machine and proceded to recognize new devices and ask for their drivers. My only glitch was once when it found a device named "Unnamed device" and asked for its driver. I tried putting in various discs but couldn't find anything that would satisfy that request, so I skipped it. I later installed some drivers from the disc that came with the motherboard and that seemed to fix that issue. The whole process was much less painful than I thought it was going to be. YMMV.

 

[GiGoLo]

another way you could do it is to boot into safe mode, goto device manager and remove your pnp bios (plug and play bios) and pci bridge under system devices... your device manager will be practically empty on the next reboot (but don't boot up that drive again until you put it in the new system). this will remove any bindings to the hardware in your current system and when you boot it up for the first time in the new system, windows will basically be installing all the hardware for the first time. this is a good way to prevent any hardware conflicts with the devices from your current system.