Motherboard/cpu upgrade: Is it possible to keep my OS intact?

[Nocturnaloner]

I'm running Win2k, and I just swapped out everything short of my case, power supply and drives.  I've done this once before, and ended up re-installing the OS on top of the old one, which is not a big deal on a MAME machine, unless you have important stuff in the My Documents directory.  Even so, I'd like to take a stab at getting Windows going with the new hardware without a re-install.  There's this site: http://www.windowsreinstall.com/install/other/motherboard/win2k.htm which mentions the txtsetup.oem, but I thought that was just for SCSI and RAID?  Will it work for normal IDE?  There is a textsetup.oem on the disc, but it doesn't seem to say anything about those drivers.  Anyone done this successfully?

[jcrouse]

Unfortunately it's RELOAD time. It's the only way to have a good fresh/clean/proper functioning Windows.

John

[Nocturnaloner]

That's what I figured.   Thanks!

[jcrouse]

A good way to avoid it in the future is to keep your OS on it's own hard drive (if you have the resources available), a 20GB or so and keep your emulators set up on second and third drives. Then when you upgrade you can reload the OS and the emulators will be ready to go. THe only two that come to mind that may need reinstalled because of writing to the registry are ePSXe and FreeDO but I'm sure there are a couple of more.

John

[Nocturnaloner]

You're right, that's definitely the way to go.  I've never even heard of those emulators.  Fortunately, MAME and Mamewah seem to live happily in their own directories, without any nassty registry keys.

[jcrouse]

ePSXe as you may have guessed is for PSX and FreeDO is a 3DO emulator. Go to http://www.zophar.net/windos.phtml to see what emus are available for what system. He seems to have missed a few updates in the last month or so but it's still a great resource.

John

[kcoleman]

I just create two partions with all the  mame stuff in one and the win install in another.  same concept as two drives without the disaster recovery capability or the cost.

[bioart]

You should check out sysprep from microsoft.  At least on XP, it will allow you to painlessly switch MBs... You run it, turn the machine off, do the swap and when you turn it on, it detects all new devices, just like if you had bought it from Dell or the like.

Very, very cool!  search for sysprep on microsoft.com

Art

[Nocturnaloner]

Thanks for all the input.  I'm on 2k, so I don't think sysprep will help.

Even worse, the refurb motherboard I got from Newegg is DOA, so this project is on hold until I get a replacement 

[krick]

There's a great sticky-thread on swapping motherboards in the Ars-Technica forums...

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x/a/tpc/f/77909774/m/1400925745


I've used this procedure to upgrade the motherboard on my primary Windows 2000 machine three times without re-installing the OS.

I've also upgraded two other Windows 2000 machines as well without incident.

[Nocturnaloner]

Best. Post. Ever.

Fantastic!  That is exactly the kind of info I was looking for.  I'll let you know how it goes once I get through with the RMA Tango.

[Nocturnaloner]

Alright!  Good news.  Just by using the SECOND repair option from the bootable windows install disc, as described in the article I linked to at the top of the thread, I was able to cruise right through the upgrade with no problems.  It even kept my BootSkin intact!  This is with 2000 pro Sp4 mind you, so YMMV.

In other news: I am an idiot.  Turns out the motherboard wasn't bad at all...
...I just neglected to plug in the 4-pin plug that powers the CPU. 

Uhm... Oops!!

Hey, they didn't have those new-fangled extra plugs back in the stone age when I started building my own pcs.  Never mind that the last one I built did...

[maximame]

Yes it is possible.  I am using Acronis true Image.  If you use Acronis True Image inconjuntion with sysprep then you can take all of your data to a new machine.  I have one hard drive with a C and D Drive.  I keep the operating sys on the C Drive with mame and mamewah etc.....  On my D Drive I have folders for my roms.  With Acronis tru Image I can make a hard drive back up and do a complete restore within 4 to 5 minutes tops.  I have made a dvd backup file for for my complete system excluding the roms files so I can take the dvd and put it into a new machine and be up and running in no time at all.  This is my backup because I know I have put many of hours into configuring my system.  When I started from scratch from building my operating system, I made a backup copy of a fresh sytem install and then I made a backup after I had my mame system up and running.  If I make a error when installing a new emulator or something I can always go back to a fresh start.  In fact, I did a microsft update and my project64 had memory errors due to the system update.  I spent hours researching the error and so a little blurb on the net about the Microsoft update and I just refreshed my drive and I was up and running again.  If you are trying new programs and emaulators as often as I have and messing things up over and over, Acronis can be a life saver.

M