want to upgrade 440LX to Abit KT7: Will I HAVE to reinstall everything??

[tickbird]

Has anyone been able to/heard of successfully swapping boards and CPUs without having to reinstall Win (I have 95osr2)and then every other prog they've got? What a hassle! I hope I can plug in my drives, install VIA drivers and GO! Possible?

 

[R6Veteran]

My theory is that if I change "ANYTHING". mobo, ram, video card, sound, etc...I re-format and do a clean install of Windows. You have to understand that whenever you install any new hardware or software for that matter, you windows regstry is changed. If you try plugging all of your perifreals into a new mobo and cpu the registry will be confused and drivers will be different. It may work to some extent but its so much more comforting to know that you have everything fresh. If I were you I would re-formt and re-install windows after making the hardware changes.

 

[office boy]

Well I don't know about reformating for just ram, video or sound... But for motherboard definantaly (sp?)
Especially going from Intel to VIA.

 

[AgGolfer]

I totally agree with R6Veteran. If you don't want to reformat, go into device manager and remove everything from there then turn the computer off, swap the mobos and Windows will re-install the hardware. I still recommend format just for the peace of mind.

 

[NforSa]

you will probably need to install at least win98 - I dont think VIA sipport win95 any more

 

[Motorheader]

I agree with going to Win98se. The changes in hardware make your new setup a Win95 driver/patch hell so to speak. Copy the whole win98 directory to one of your drives, shut system down, make hardware changes, restart system to dos prompt, start win98se upgrade from the directory your win98 directory:

setup /p j

Worked for me countless number of times.

 

[CraigRT]

Yep, i'd format and re-install.. esp. when you're swapping mobos.
don't have to for maybe a video card but a fresh install always makes sure you'll have no problems once up and running.
but yeah a mobo swap will almost always cause problems.

start fresh!

 

[kylebisme]

i just lost my board on my k63 the other day with lots of important stuff traped on my system drive. i was looking to upgrade at the end of the month anyway, so i pushed it up a bit and went down to the local store and found a t-bird and mobo for a good price and threw in a geforce to replace my voodoo3. so i bolted it all to together and fired it up, watched widows update drivers and restart about 4 times and she is up and running just fine.

 

[fast0]

I really had a strange experience with my tbird.

Swapped out my old Abit BX6-2 with Celeron with a brand new A7V/850.
Fired it up, watched Windows hum along, and everything went fine.

Thought to myself, Let's install my SCSI drive. Bad Move. Windows crashes, GPF's.. wouldn't load anymore. "Uh oh!"

Time to reinstall windows (had no choice at this point). Wouldn't install, comes back with "MSDOS performed extended header fault" (or something to that effect).

After 2 days, I finally am like "Maybe its overheating!" (I didnt think that before because I was running perfectly fine before installing the SCSI adapter). Sure enough, that was the problem.

I promptly beat the golden orb and bought a 6035.

Moral of the story: Reinstalling windows may be a better option in the long run.

 

[IaPuP]

To TheSnowMan- upgrading from one VIA chipset to another VIA chipset is usually much better than changing from an Intel to a VIA.

I think going from an LX board (older than many Super 7 chipsets) to an KT133 would cause some problems. I've seen it work, but generally it makes the system seem a little slow.

Also, Windows 95 is a USELESS system. Why would you run a TBird under Win95?

Did you know that Windows 95 is only capable of using 48MB of RAM?
Yeah.. well.. it doesnt' support most USB devices, nor does it offer any type of system recovery options. There are a few stack problems and it is guaranteed to have a stack overflow at least once a month if you never even touch it and it will happen weekly if you use it during that time but don't reboot.

It doesn't really support any of the new videocards properly and in all, go get another OS. Anything from Win98, Win98SE, Win2k, Win ME, Linux, FreeBSD. whatever... you'll be better off with any of them.

Eric

 

[Dark4ng3l]

hey I sugest you reformat one every 3-4 months if you format before geting new hardware you will save yourself from major headaches and the fact you wil stil have to do it anyway(if you want a stable system that is)

 

[dc8heavy]

I just installed a Kt-7 mobo with a T-bird 750 and a new hard drive, what i did do was that i made a image copy of my old drive to my new one. keep in mind that you must make sure that your os is working (meaning stable).
i had far too many apps with updates that I did not want to reistall.

equip:
Abit AKT-7
T-Bird 750
micron 128 mb ram
Stealth S540 pci 32 mb
sound blaster live

will overclock later!!!!1

 

[ingenue007]

directory your win98 directory:

motorhead -

i'm doing the same (going from BX to VIA) but i am using win2k? is the switch the same?

BTW, that switch disables ACPI rt?