Question about installing HD in diff computer

[Ranger361]

Just got a new Barebones and I would like to upgrade my wife's computer. She has a AMD 300 and my old computer is a PII 400, both have the ABIT-BH6 motherboards, both have the same soundcard and modems.

Question is . . . can I just take her Hard Drive out and put it in my old computer so she can keep all her files and bookmarks?

 

[Killbat]

Windows will probably reassign resources to everything and reinstall drivers, but it just might be OK.

 

[SemperFi]

Ranger there is no way an AMD "socket 7" board, and PII "Slot 1" are the same motherboard they definately use different a chipset . I have done many upgrades of Mother board and processor which is similar case to yours. Some times I can get it to work other times I had to format and reinstall the OS. I would try it if it doesn't work you can put drive in other system and save important files then format and re install.

I would recomend download the latest drivers for the new board, video, all drivers and keep them on the hard drive. Also copy the \win98 folder to the hard drive from CD. Every time I attempted this upgrade I had problems reading the cd because the drivers from the old chipset was differnt. This creates a catch 22, you need to install drivers usually on cd, and your drive won't recognise cd without proper drivers. I done this twice this fall one went fine the other required a reinstall.

I hope this helps you out.

 

[AC]

abit bh-6 in both?? the bh-6 is a slot1 board, amd's are slota
so they must be different motherboards

to allow reinstallation of chipset drivers, u first need to remove every driver from the windows installation (registry edit); win will redetect everything and prompt for drivers; sometimes this works, but others cases it doesn't;

i would recommend a backup of files and a clean install

 

[Vinny N]

Yeah, I'm in agreement with the other replies, they can't possibly have the same motherboard, the 300 is a Socket 7 CPU and the P2 400 is a Slot 1 CPU.

Here's what I would do.

0.Make sure the Windows CAB files are on a folder on the Hard drive that is going in her "new" system. You may also want to copy any drivers to a folder on the hard drive as well.

1.Swap the hard drives.

2.Boot the system into safe mode.

3.Run regedit.

4.Open up the HKEY Local Machine
Delete the whole Enum branch.

5. Reboot. Hit esc when it complains about the video driver. It shouldn't pop up with detecting any new hard ware just yet.

6. launch start menu, settings, control, panel, add new hardware. Do the full detection. Let it finish, you may have to point to the CAB files which are on the hard drive if you followed step 0.

7. restart the system just like it wants.

7.5. if it detects any hardware, be sure to point to to appropriate drivers. be aware that you may/should not have a cd-rom drive at this point.

8. open system properties and goto device manager. There may be two video devices, remove the one WITHOUT an exclamation mark. There may be two keyboards, remove the one WITHOUT an exclamation mark. There may be two Direct Memory Access Controllers, remove the one WITHOUT any exclamation mark. Reboot the system.

8.5. if it detects any hardware, be sure to point to to appropriate drivers. be aware that you may/should not have a cd-rom drive at this point.

9. Anything it didn't install a driver for, update/change the driver through device manager now.

10. If the system is indeed a BH6, it shouldn't need any extra drivers. If it's a VIA motherboard, I recommend installing the latest non-beta VIA 4 in 1 drivers.

11. You're done. All the software and programs should be quite content. In the worse case, you may have to check some apps over real quick that utilize the modem, as it may a blank entry or invalid modem selected. (common problem, especially for any dial up networking connections, just check the properties, say ok to the error, and reselect the correct modem)

 

[Ranger361]

I did screw up, its not AMD but Cyrix . . . mind fart

The MD are the same same chipset, just that one motherboard was newer.

Thanks for all the help, after work I dive in and try the switch.

Thanks again for all the help

Steve

 

[Ranger361]

Everything went just fine . . . stuck the HD in booted right-up into windows. Windows reloaded several things in the device manager, re-detected some hardware and booted right into her normal screen.

Thanks Again