If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#61
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
"Shenan Stanley" wrote in message ... Answers inline... jim wrote: I'd like to ask some questions about replacing/changing a mobo in an XP pro system. I've done some research on this issue and have come to the following conclusions. XP is not quite as Plug & Play as 98[SE] was in this regard. One can not just take the OS HD and put it in another box and expect it to boot and re-find everything and install all the appropriate drivers etc. like it would in 98SE. Yes - XP is not as "Ghost/Clone friendly" as its predecessors. You could take all Windows OS's before it (Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000) and usually put it on a different set of hardware and with minimal muss/fuss, you could get it going. You could even then make an image with the additional drivers/HAL information added and now the image would function on multiple machines without a problem. With the advent of WIndows XP, this simplicity and grace went away, Some of it went away but apparently alot of the same functionality is still there in XP as I described in my opening post. a more forceful approach (or actually using tools like sysprep) became necessary in order to clone the software to another set of hardware than that it was originally installed upon. The limitations appear to be in two areas. The first is the HAL which is a function of the CPU and number thereof and presence/absence of ACPI mobo BIOS. The second is the HD drivers. I've found all sorts of site/articles regarding how to do this and fix these issues for the mobo ATA controller case. Other HD cases seem to be tractable using the F6 install drivers(SCSI technique). One that seems to be similar to many others regarding the mobo ATA HD issue is: www.mostlycreativeworkshop.com/article11.html My conclusion is that one should make the registry and file additions on any XP system so that failure recovery on new hardware is more convenient at a later time. Am I missing something here or is that about right. The concerns with your conclusion is that you know when the failure is going to occur and what hardware you will be moving it to before that failure occurs. I don't follow. No precognition is necessary regarding time or target. Not only that, this is Windows XP - not that important of an OS in the scheme of things - certainly not a server-level catastrophic failure event. If it is, then you have not thought out your network/user environment well, or in the case of a single-user environment, you were dumb enough not to make backups. Huh? You gone off on some magical mystery tour outside the scope on my post and intentions. Thius is not a backup issue. Assuming this has nothing to do with JUST failure recovery, This has everything to do with FAST failure recovery and also just hardware upgrades unassociated with any failure. but just ease of movement to a new set of hardware or even, as is done in many university type environments, ghosting to diverse lab machines - then some of your assumptions are correct. Right. I know of a group that uses one image (clone) to ghost several different sets of hardware (vastly different) by ripping out a large section of the registry and replacing that chunk with the proper chunk before the first GUI boot after applying a cloned image. Right there are a number of places on the web describing such registry mods. XP fought them tooth and nail on doing the older style they were used to with Windows 2000 and before of just adding additional hardware information so that application to another set of hardware components were built in - it seemed to clean itself up in other words - the new drivers needed took out the old drivers instead of just being added - thus their new methodology. XP is removing stuff? Can you cite any sources on that, please. That's one of the issue I'm actively researching: Why not put all that stuff in the registry up front in preparationfor any later potential HW change? The question is will XP let it stay there gracefully. The second issue is that HAL. If the old and new systems are single CPU ACPI mobos then everything works. It makes no difference is one is a VIA chipset and Athlon and the other an Intel chipset and an Intel CPU. Do I have this right so far? No. You are not. Try it. Get two systems, identical in everything but chipset and swap hard drives. I don't mean two different versions of a VIA chipset or something lame, but one Intel, one via. My experience says Windows XP will freak - to put it in layman's terms. Actually I am right in at least some cases. The question is how right am I across many different cases. Where do any problems arise. See the post using the same subject yesterday in microsoft.public.windowsxp.general from Gary R. : "While one person's experience is hardly something to depend on, I replaced a failed mobo in a Gateway a couple of months ago, going from a P4/Intel system to Athlon/Via, fully expecting to have to reinstall with a new copy of XP (because the original was a Gateway OEM.) To my surprise, the hardware was recognized and installed just as it usually is in ME or 98. Once I installed all the Via drivers, everything worked absolutely without a hitch. " This DOES WORK the issue is the HAL and the IDE[disk] drivers. If you get the HAL right and the disk is readable then things work. The question is how robust is the "DOES WORK"? If one is going from a single CPU case to a new P4 supporting HT then one must force in a new HAL for multiprocessor ACPI. Apparently that can be done in Recovery console or by putting the HD in another system where files may be manipulated before attempting a boot on the new mobo. Right so far? This is true. With some manipulation (as mentioned above earlier, before booting in the new system) you can accomplishing some pretty cool things. Are the above the only two issues? Will all the other gadgets and chipsets etc. be redetected and appropriate drivers installed? Will one be able to boot and move forward in most all cases if the above two issues are dealt with? I think I covered this above. YES, it is possible to do what you are suggesting in some ways. Practical, no - possible, yes. If your purpose is disaster recovery, as implied - not only is it impractical, but impossible to predict when the failure will occur and what hardware (chipset, drives, video cards, network cards, etc) will be in the replacement system, or if the data on the drive will even be in a state to do this recovery. Well no. All of my postings on this issue have obviously been predicated on the assumption that the HW failure was a non-HD and non-HD corrupting failure. If there was a HD or HD corrupting failure then one must go to a backup. Some of us were smart enough to figure out that the best backups are full HD image backups(aka Ghost etc.). So if you want to view this thread from another angle then re-title if "How to quickly recover from any HW failure using your HD image backup" You state "My conclusion is that one should make the registry and file additions on any XP system so that failure recovery on new hardware is more convenient at a later time." To me, that is the true failure of this whole discussion. If your conclusion had been "My conclusion is that one could make the registry and file removals/changes on an XP system so that cloning on new hardware is possible." Then you would have me agreeing 100% - but you said recovery. As I've already describe the two issues are the same issue. If you are using XP as a server or even as a personal system and something fails - I don't care if it is as simple as the motherboard and all data is recoverable - it is easier, faster and more practical in the worse case scenario (or just simple fact you consider hardware failure an opportunity to upgrade power/speed) of all hardware/not data replacement to do a repair installation and move on with life. Simply wrong as described above. You cannot predict in a failure scenario what hardware you will be moving to. Don't need to. And if it is not a failure scenario - again - yes - I agree, there are things you can do to move without doing an actual repair installation, but unless doing it on a grander scale than the casual home user - it seems like a worthless endeavor... Huh? Catch up. UNLESS, and here is my other conclusion (possible scenario actually) from your persistence in this matter - you are trying to come up with some programmatic way of transferring the system so you can create a product to do exactly what you are discussing here - in which case you have made a bad business decision in discussing it here, as people who are doing it now may decide, "Not only is it possible and I am doing it now, but I can create a product and get it to market now and this guy made me realize it." -- They may thank you... Otherwise, in my years of cloning thousands of systems every 3-5 months with 100+ applications installed upon each system working together and thousands of roaming profile users all with different needs/wants - it seems only practical and worthwhile to someone like me - who would have figured out other methods are usually faster, making sure that the users data is never stored on the local machine anyway and if it is, tough luck, they should back it up. |
Ads |
#62
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
"philo" wrote in message ... You may also want to look into running a repair installation after switching to the new hardware. This will allow you to keep programs and settings while getting around the driver issue. Bob That seems to be the easiest solution. I agree, the repair installtion only takes a few minutes... and all you need do afterwards is re-apply the updates No, the two together take at least an hour. |
#63
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
"-Cryogenic-©" wrote in message ... jim wrote: No, the most painless solution is the one I described in my opening post if all the details can be worked out. I'm looking for folks who might want to contribute to fully describing that solutions as it appears to be nearly at hand. Maybe you should take some suggestions from some folks who know what they're doing. I do know what I'm doing. I'm trying to find some real experts on the issue. There seems to be a paucity of those here. You keep saying /your/ solution is the easiest, 'most painless' solution, when it obviously isn't. Cluelessness abounds. First, you mention swapping out the mobo, then you go on to explain that you're really interested in putting the harddrive in a completely different PC. Not the same thing is it? WRONG, they are nearly equivalent operations logically. You've been given some pretty painless solutions by the nice folks in this group. I invite anyone to read the whole thread. |
#64
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
"Ron Martell" wrote in message news "jim" wrote: I'd like to ask some questions about replacing/changing a mobo in an XP pro system. I've done some research on this issue and have come to the following conclusions. XP is not quite as Plug & Play as 98[SE] was in this regard. One can not just take the OS HD and put it in another box and expect it to boot and re-find everything and install all the appropriate drivers etc. like it would in 98SE. Not true. Windows 95/98/Me required specific detailed steps in order to *successfully* replace a motherboard. Not true as so many posters have confirmed. Usually this involved at least manually deleting all relevant items from Device Manager or (even better) deleting the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum key from the registry. Otherwise there would be a proliferation of obsolete and duplicated items in Device Manager which could adversely affect performance. Might so affect? The fact is that the move generally works. The limitations appear to be in two areas. The first is the HAL which is a function of the CPU and number thereof and presence/absence of ACPI mobo BIOS. The second is the HD drivers. I've found all sorts of site/articles regarding how to do this and fix these issues for the mobo ATA controller case. Other HD cases seem to be tractable using the F6 install drivers(SCSI technique). One that seems to be similar to many others regarding the mobo ATA HD issue is: www.mostlycreativeworkshop.com/article11.html My conclusion is that one should make the registry and file additions on any XP system so that failure recovery on new hardware is more convenient at a later time. Am I missing something here or is that about right. The second issue is that HAL. If the old and new systems are single CPU ACPI mobos then everything works. It makes no difference is one is a VIA chipset and Athlon and the other an Intel chipset and an Intel CPU. Do I have this right so far? Nope. Totally wrong. Can you fix a Ford with Chev parts? Clueless. I did the research. If one is going from a single CPU case to a new P4 supporting HT then one must force in a new HAL for multiprocessor ACPI. Apparently that can be done in Recovery console or by putting the HD in another system where files may be manipulated before attempting a boot on the new mobo. Right so far? Are the above the only two issues? Will all the other gadgets and chipsets etc. be redetected and appropriate drivers installed? Will one be able to boot and move forward in most all cases if the above two issues are dealt with? See http://michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html for factual information about how to do this in Windows XP. That page is by one of the old foggie "can't be done" set. The article impeaches itself early on with "Since the repair install in my opinion is an absolute necessity when changing a motherboard or moving a hard drive with XP installed, " Check the URL in my opening post here by someone who is actually working the issue I'm interested in: www.mostlycreativeworkshop.com/article11.html |
#65
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
jim wrote:
Here's a thought, you arrogant halfwit, place the HDD up your ass sideways. Don't come here asking for people to help you "on your terms". You most certainly seem to know everything already anyway! -- I'm not a racist - I hate everybody EQUALLY! |
#66
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
"-Cryogenic-©" wrote in message ... jim wrote: Here's a thought, you arrogant halfwit, place the HDD up your ass sideways. Don't come here asking for people to help you "on your terms". You most certainly seem to know everything already anyway! There's always a few trolls that can't let go of the old wive's tales floating around. |
#67
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
jim wrote:
There's always a few trolls that can't let go of the old wive's tales floating around. What's this got to do with your old lady? There's nothing floating around here except your ego. -- I'm not a racist - I hate everybody EQUALLY! |
#68
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
"jim" wrote:
That page is by one of the old foggie "can't be done" set. The article impeaches itself early on with "Since the repair install in my opinion is an absolute necessity when changing a motherboard or moving a hard drive with XP installed, " Check the URL in my opening post here by someone who is actually working the issue I'm interested in: www.mostlycreativeworkshop.com/article11.html You are of course free to do whatever you want with your own computer. However postings in these newsgroups also serve as advice to others regarding the issues discussed and I for one am not about to advocate high risk procedures where safer alternatives exist. The simple fact is that the approach you advocate will in many cases result in computers being crashed/smashed/trashed because of the hardware changes. The "Repair Install" approach is well proven and is safe. Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada -- Microsoft MVP On-Line Help Computer Service http://onlinehelp.bc.ca "The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much." |
#69
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
Ron Martell wrote:
The "Repair Install" approach is well proven and is safe. He doesn't want that. He wants someone to hold his hand and do it /his/ way. If you don't he'll hide in the corner with his dead PCs and suck his thumb. -- I'm not a racist - I hate everybody EQUALLY! |
#70
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
jim wrote:
"philo" wrote in message ... You may also want to look into running a repair installation after switching to the new hardware. This will allow you to keep programs and settings while getting around the driver issue. Bob That seems to be the easiest solution. I agree, the repair installtion only takes a few minutes... and all you need do afterwards is re-apply the updates No, the two together take at least an hour. Not for someone who knows how. -- - relic - Don't take life too seriously, You won't get out alive. |
#71
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
jim wrote:
"-Cryogenic-©" wrote in message ... jim wrote: Here's a thought, you arrogant halfwit, place the HDD up your ass sideways. Don't come here asking for people to help you "on your terms". You most certainly seem to know everything already anyway! There's always a few trolls that can't let go of the old wive's tales floating around. But he does have good advice for you. Why don't you take it? -- - relic - Don't take life too seriously, You won't get out alive. |
#72
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
relic wrote:
| jim wrote: || "philo" wrote in message || ... ||| ||| |||| You may also want to look into running a repair installation after |||| switching to the new hardware. This will allow you to keep |||| programs and settings while getting around the driver issue. |||| Bob |||| |||| |||| That seems to be the easiest solution. ||| ||| ||| ||| I agree, the repair installtion only takes a few minutes... ||| and all you need do afterwards is re-apply the updates || || No, the two together take at least an hour. | | Not for someone who knows how. 4 Minutes here. -- Gazwad Freelance scientist and people tester. Guardian: alt.os.windows-xp Moderator: alt.warez.uk www.gazwad.com |
#73
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
-Cryogenic-© wrote:
| Ron Martell wrote: | || The "Repair Install" approach is well proven and is safe. | | He doesn't want that. He wants someone to hold his hand and do it | /his/ way. If you don't he'll hide in the corner with his dead PCs | and suck his thumb. Marginally more acceptable than shoving his thumb up his arse and pulling out a disk drive. -- Gazwad Freelance scientist and people tester. Guardian: alt.os.windows-xp Moderator: alt.warez.uk www.gazwad.com |
#74
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
"Ron Martell" wrote in message ... "jim" wrote: That page is by one of the old foggie "can't be done" set. The article impeaches itself early on with "Since the repair install in my opinion is an absolute necessity when changing a motherboard or moving a hard drive with XP installed, " Check the URL in my opening post here by someone who is actually working the issue I'm interested in: www.mostlycreativeworkshop.com/article11.html You are of course free to do whatever you want with your own computer. However postings in these newsgroups also serve as advice to others regarding the issues discussed and I for one am not about to advocate high risk procedures where safer alternatives exist. The simple fact is that the approach you advocate will in many cases result in computers being crashed/smashed/trashed because of the hardware changes. Utter nonsense. What's being discussed trashes nothing. It work or it doesn't. There are and have been a bunch of wackos running around saying "it doesn't work so don't dare try it". The real message from these folks is "I tried it once and couldn't make it work so don't dare show that it can be done and expose for my short comings". The "Repair Install" approach is well proven and is safe. AND SLOW. |
#75
|
|||
|
|||
Replace Mobo in XP??
"relic" wrote in message news jim wrote: "philo" wrote in message ... You may also want to look into running a repair installation after switching to the new hardware. This will allow you to keep programs and settings while getting around the driver issue. Bob That seems to be the easiest solution. I agree, the repair installtion only takes a few minutes... and all you need do afterwards is re-apply the updates No, the two together take at least an hour. Not for someone who knows how. Wrong. Why don't you contribute by having a look here and commenting: www.mostlycreativeworkshop.com/article11.html |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|