Upgrading to a new motherboard

[enviroman50]

When you upgrade to a new motherboard, do you have to start from scratch with a clean hard drive? I am upgrading to a new motherboard (450mhz to 1.2ghz) and I have a 13 gig hd. Do I have to wipe the hd clean with the motherboard change? Or will the hd with all the info work with the new MB?

 

[BChumie]

Hello,

There are tricks around not formating the hd but most computer users would agree that you should back up your data and completely format and reinstall windows and your applications. (If you format you should have less problems in the long run)

Brad

 

[chaps]

It depends on your operating system. I have found that with windows 98, windows will find new hardware and motherboard components and will install new drivers. You may have to reboot a time or two and also direct the system to the new drivers, or old drivers for the old plug in cards that you transfer over. I have found that it is best to copy your operating systems files to a folder on the hard drive. So that as the system updates you can update file changes directly from the hard drive.

Mike

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Safest to reformat/rebuild. Win9x/ME can become somewhat unpredictable/unstable otherwise.

I have found that W2k/XP will simply install over the top of an existing installation (of W2k/XP!) and sort out any discrepancies pretty well.

Try partitioning your hard disk(s) so that O/S goes in one partition, apps in another, and data in a 3rd. That way you only ever have to reformat the O/S partition - although you'll still have to re-install the apps. Most apps will detect that components already exist, and re-install in seconds, however.

Hope this is helpful CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[DBSSP]

I agree, it is much easier to do a major hardware upgrade with a clean hd. Otherwise you get all kinds of error from the drivers of your old motherboard and it becomes a big tangled mess. Backup, and start clean! Also if the motherboard decides to burp out some problems you can eliminate the OS right away since there is no OS to cause you a problem. Jay

"Jeezus-sqeezits Bob!"