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  • Swapping Motherboard, help

    My father's computer is a Dell XPSM200
    I would want to upgrade it. And thought of simply changing mobo, CPU and memory.
    It wouldn't be a problem if my father wasn't totaly against formating the hard drive (he has to much important software in it).

    So my question is: Is it possible to change the motherboard without formatting the drive, is Win98 smart enough to take care of the change.
    Or is it any other way to do those modifications.

    Thanx, Vlip

  • #2
    Win98 should be smart enough to see the change and morph itself accordingly, but it is a good idea to wipe out windows. The next best thing would be to make sure you have all drivers handy and delete from your registry the Enum tree from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. This will wipe out everything from device manager and on the next reboot find everything all over again. It takes a little while to find everything all over again, but I have found it very useful.

    ------------------
    Cheers,
    Steve

    Running on a PC with all sorts of bits n bobs in it helping to find ET calling home...

    Currently running PD 5.12.xx and BIOS 2.5xx

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    • #3
      What do you mean by wiping windows out?

      Vlip

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      • #4
        I recently did exactly the same thing, here is what worked for me.

        0) Make sure you motherboard is the same form factor as the case (if it is a tower, more than likely ATX).

        1) Back up the registry. Start->Run then type in regedit. In regedit go to Registry->Export Registry File and save the registry.

        2) Back up ALL of your data. This is always good to do 'just in case.' If your Dad does not have copies or backups of his software, make some. Make sure he goes through the computer and identifies his data so you are positive you have it all.

        3) Once you have back ups of your registry and data (double check, it may take time, but may save you in the long run), make sure you have device drivers for all of you peripherals. Once again, this is just in case, but can save you several hours if something goes bad. All motherboard, hard drive, cd-rom and floppy drive device drivers should already be in Win98, what you need to worry about is sound, video, modem, network, etc.

        4) Before you swap out your motherboard, CPU and RAM, go into Device Manager (right click My Computer->Properties->Device Manager) and remove everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. Once you put in the new motherboard it will have to redetect everything, so this just makes it go quicker. Some of the devices will be attached to other devices and they won't let you remove them until the other part is removed. SO start from the top and work your way down to the bottom, then go back to the top and do this until everything is gone or you cannot remove anything else. Deleting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE (NOT the whole key because most of the software settings are stored there too) in the registry would work about now too.

        5) Shut Down the computer (full power down) and replace the motherboard, CPU, RAM and everything else. Make sure you touch the metal case everytime you go in to work on something, otherwise you may cause a static electricity shock and fry the board.

        6) Once evreything is back in, power it up and watch the start up screens to make sure all of your hardware is found by the BIOS and when you reach Win98, it will redetct all of your hardware and set it all up.

        That should just about do it. Win98 is good at redetecting hardware so there shouldn't be too many problems.

        Jammrock
        “Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out”
        –The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett

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        • #5
          Thanx for the help.
          I'm now quite aware of how I'll do it.

          Vlip

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