MB/Processor swaps

[Carl Curry]

I will be swapping a MB/CPU on a box soon. It is my workhorse box. I
want to minimize downtime/config. In fact, I don’t wanna reconfigure at
all, but the box is showing it’s age. It’s time for a speed boost. For
reference, swap is Abit BH6/550Mhz to Abit BH7/2.0Ghz. I've dug through
the archive here, and see the repair/in place upgrade is most common.
Nonetheless -

I have three possible scenarios outlined below. I’d appreciate anyones
input about this task...

1. On old board last boot, delete devices that I can that won’t be
present on the new board, shut it down. Swap it. Boot it and let XP make
sense of it all. I’ve done this successfully in the past (not WinXP).
After a few boot cycles, things settle in and I can polish up loose ends.

2. The more accepted in place upgrade/repair. But I remember very
limited success with this on WinNT. Don’t know how well it’s evolved.
I’m particularly concerned about things like...
* Vendor installed drivers
* IE6
* Windows Media 9
* DirectX 9
* Hotfixes, Service Packs - which I see will all have to be reapplied.
Should I remove them from Add/Remove to avoid creating a post repair mess?

3. Just bite the bullet, and build it up fresh. I have completely
enjoyed the improved stability/reliability of XP, and don’t miss the
once a year or so reformat/house clean that was so typical in 9x kernel
Windows. Then, with all the software, patches, service packs for each of
those ad infinitum, personal settings for everything. Agh. I dread it.
The configuration is perfectly good right now.
Depending on the full implication/backtracking a repair setup creates, I
see this approach as an absolute last resort.

Thanks for any input.

[Paul Riemerman]

I recently upgraded from XP Pro on a Dell Optiplex GX1 450 mhz P2 to a Dell
Dimension 2300 with a P4 1.8 ghz processor. Restoring a Drive Image 2002
image created for the job did not work properly. I ended up having to
install a fresh copy of XP on the new machine, restoring the old image to a
non-system partiition, manually importing my email, documents and data to
the fresh copy of XP, installing all the drivers from the 2300 resource cd,
and reinstalling the programs I had on my GX1.

The image would not boot on my new system because of hardware differences.

Paul Riemerman

"Carl Curry" > wrote in message
...
> I will be swapping a MB/CPU on a box soon. It is my workhorse box. I
> want to minimize downtime/config. In fact, I don’t wanna reconfigure at
> all, but the box is showing it’s age. It’s time for a speed boost. For
> reference, swap is Abit BH6/550Mhz to Abit BH7/2.0Ghz. I've dug through
> the archive here, and see the repair/in place upgrade is most common.
> Nonetheless -
>
> I have three possible scenarios outlined below. I’d appreciate anyones
> input about this task...
>
> 1. On old board last boot, delete devices that I can that won’t be
> present on the new board, shut it down. Swap it. Boot it and let XP make
> sense of it all. I’ve done this successfully in the past (not WinXP).
> After a few boot cycles, things settle in and I can polish up loose ends.
>
> 2. The more accepted in place upgrade/repair. But I remember very
> limited success with this on WinNT. Don’t know how well it’s evolved.
> I’m particularly concerned about things like...
> * Vendor installed drivers
> * IE6
> * Windows Media 9
> * DirectX 9
> * Hotfixes, Service Packs - which I see will all have to be reapplied.
> Should I remove them from Add/Remove to avoid creating a post repair mess?
>
> 3. Just bite the bullet, and build it up fresh. I have completely
> enjoyed the improved stability/reliability of XP, and don’t miss the
> once a year or so reformat/house clean that was so typical in 9x kernel
> Windows. Then, with all the software, patches, service packs for each of
> those ad infinitum, personal settings for everything. Agh. I dread it.
> The configuration is perfectly good right now.
> Depending on the full implication/backtracking a repair setup creates, I
> see this approach as an absolute last resort.
>
> Thanks for any input.
>

[Alex Nichol]

Carl Curry wrote:

>I will be swapping a MB/CPU on a box soon. It is my workhorse box. I
>want to minimize downtime/config. In fact, I don’t wanna reconfigure at
>all, but the box is showing it’s age. It’s time for a speed boost. For
>reference, swap is Abit BH6/550Mhz to Abit BH7/2.0Ghz.

You do need to do a repair:

First have a backup of critical data, just in case.

Put in the new hardware, power up to BIOS setup, set date/time, ensure
disks are detected, and set the BIOS to boot CD before Hard disk, Then
put in the XP CD and reboot to boot it. Start Setup (do not take
'Repair' at this stage), then after the license agreement take 'Repair
Installation'. This will retain your existing software installations
and most settings, but rebuild the underlying interfaces to match the
new hardware.

Windows Updates will have to be run again, especially SP1; and if you
have drivers that only arrived with that, like USB 2 ones, you will need
to update drivers for the devices concerned. You may find that things
like virtual memory settings and some aspects of appearance have
reverted to defaults

This should retain your activation status, though if you have never
registered you may have the setup suggest it now (don't bother). But
just in case, a good idea is first to back up the activation files,
windows\system32\wpa.dbl and wpa.bak - if it complains on activation,
restore them (they fit on a floppy) after and reboot. You may
nevertheless find you have made so many changes that you need to
activate again by phoning in, but it is worth the try.

--
Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows - File Systems)
Bournemouth, U.K.

[Carl Curry]

Hmmm. Good information. Thanks very much. Off we go...