Upgrading w/o reinstalling XP

351Cleveland

Golden Member
Apr 14, 2001
1,381
6
81
Hello-

I am upgrading from a P3 800 and an Asus P3V4X to a Abit AN7 and a Mobile XP 2500+. I tried just installing everything and turning it on. Everything boots fine, but Windows will not start up. I have tried Safe Mode and normal boot. It STARTS to boot up, but stops and then resets the machine. I dont know what this means. I wouldnt have thought a boot sequence could reset a machine, but since the chipsets are so radically different, maybe it does?

I would rather not reinstall XP unless I absolutely have to do it. Is there a way I can limp into Windows so I can load the new motherboard drivers, or am I pretty much to the point where I have to do a fresh XP install?

I am not overclocking, and I am running Crucial memory. I shouldnt have any stability issues.
 

phray

Member
Jun 11, 2004
141
0
0
its probably gonna be best to just reformat. it may be possible to salvage your old install, but unless your familiar enough w/ all of your old drivers to get rid of all the old files AND reg entries manually, its just not worth the effort.

i recently did something vaguely similar, except before i shutdown the old system, i went into device manager and removed everything of that i knew would be changing, and made sure i had the drivers for the new stuff all ready to go. when i brought the new rig up, xp detected all the new hardware and kept going like a champ. however, that upgrade wasn't nearly as large as yours was. the only thing i changed out was the mobo and processor. and the new motherboard even had the same chipset as the old one, so it was a rather trivial upgrade. in fact i wouldnt have even bothered if the new stuff hadn't been free.

so in short, you'll prolly want to just reformat/reinstall windows. it is seriously a pain in the ass to clean up all the old drivers and make windows happy w/ the new setup. its not that hard to reinstall windows.

if you REALLY want to try, i'd start by putting the old stuff back in, and removing all the drivers from device manager.
 

351Cleveland

Golden Member
Apr 14, 2001
1,381
6
81
Heck with that! All the guts went into my Grandma's new machine... no luck getting them back now!

Where did I put that XP disc :)

Thanks!
 

Fern

Elite Member
Sep 30, 2003
26,907
173
106
I would rather not reinstall XP unless I absolutely have to do it. Is there a way I can limp into Windows so I can load the new motherboard drivers, or am I pretty much to the point where I have to do a fresh XP install?

Here's an Anandtech article on how to do w/o a reformat etc
LINK