Windows 98, use my current on a new pc?

[dbarton]

I run win 98 now, on a p3 450, and just want to drop my old hard drive onto a new fast MB board so I dont need to reinstall everything.

(I have 200+ prgrams installed, and just dont have the time to do it any other way.

I heard about deleting the "enum" key, which would force windows to rebuild my hardware list. Good idea? Any other issues?

 

[phry26]

I don't know a whole lot about this but I used to work at a place and we didnt have a lot of luck with this. We would copy the hard disk of a fresh install of windows 2000 on one machine and put them in very similar machines (same pheriphals) and they pretty much always failed to boot. Boards with the same chip type (intel vs. AMD) worked sometimes but not always even then . Mabye you could try installing the drive then booting off the windows CD and trying to repair the install. Good luck.

 

[dunkster]

Back up all critical data, be sure you have boot disk, get out manuals and have all drivers ready for re-install.

Use either Control Panel/System/Device Manager or the enum method to to remove all devices except Dial Up Adaptors and Plus N Play BIOS.

Shut down normally. Install new motherbaord, cpu/heatsink, FDD, HDD, CDROM and video card.

Power up, booting from floppy. Check all LEDs, switches, etc., for proper connection.

Reboot, enter BIOS, set BIOS defaults, configure boot sequence, HD and CD-ROM per board manual. be sure your cpu is properly recognized by BIOS.

Exit and save BIOS settings. Shut down and remove floppy.

Reboot using HD and let OS detect devices. Install chipset drivers and video display adaptor drivers.

Reboot and install any additional devices one-at-a-time.

You should have a conflict-free installation. If not, do an overlay installation of Win98.

This has worked for me several times when changing boards and chipsets without clean install.

Hope this helps!