Upgrade MB without reinstalling Windows ??

[render]

I currently have an Abit BG7 (845G) board and will get a BH7 (845PE) board.

How do I upgrade the board without reinstalling windows 2000 sp3?
(I don't want to reinstall all these apps I have)

 

[techfuzz]

Get your Windows CD ready cause you might need it. Because your two boards are both 845 series you should have hardly any problems doing the switch. Go ahead and replace the motherboard and let the computer boot and attempt to detect and install all the additional/changed hardware that the new motherboard has.

If you can't get it to boot into Windows the first time then restart the computer and boot from the Windows CD and choose Repair. Once the repair process has finished you should be able to boot into Windows. If you still have trouble, come back here and let us know what issues you have.

Your best option of course is to reinstall Windows with any motherboard upgrade, but I can understand your desire to keep all your installed apps.

techfuzz

 

[Shimmishim]

Originally posted by: render
I currently have an Abit BG7 (845G) board and will get a BH7 (845PE) board.

How do I upgrade the board without reinstalling windows 2000 sp3?
(I don't want to reinstall all these apps I have)

if you check the anandtech FAQ it explains how to do it.. it involves clearing registry keys and what not... good luck!

 

[oldfart]

I just did it because I was too lazy to reinstall everything 😉. I went from an EPoX 845D to an Albatron 845PE Win2K SP3. I uninstalled all of my HW drivers, and removed ALL HW from device manager using add/remove HW (use the show hidden devices button). This will take awhile. I booted from the Win2K CD, but did not pick repair. Go to the next step, and when you get to the partition part, you will again get the repair option. I did the repair and booted up OK. It found all the HW pretty much like normal. I had to install all the Windows update stuff aging like IE6 and the 12,767 security patches

 

[render]

I think I will follow oldfart's steps, which looks pretty simple and straight forward. Thanks.

 

[floccus]

Go to Anand's boards for CPU's and Mobos. Theres a sticky post there that will tell you excatly what you need to do to. Its the best option out there and you can usually improve your system by just getting rid of the old drivers.

 

[XRaider]

Your best bet is to uninstall the IDE controllers and possibly other H/W from Device Manager and then run sysprep /pnp. Then shutdown your PC and install the new board. Here are 2 articles from Anandtech on what you could possibly do. This first one involves more effort I believe then this second one - minus the ghosting. check them out.