OK, so after encountering numerous errors related to probably several componants (so far I seem to have encountered problems with my motherboard, video card, and sound card) I’ve decided to upgrade. I’ve choosen my new replacements, am going to buy them soon, but I’m wondering the best way to install them.
Since I’m not replacing the hard drive, will my system be super confused if I just relpace everything at once? Should I start small, and replace the processor and mobo first, boot up, let it get aquainted, and so forth in that fashion, one new deivce every boot up? Or just replace the whole shebang and let the hard drive figure out for itself what the fuck id going on?
I suggest doing it “piece by piece” because if you run into problems, you’ll know which piece caused them and can rectify. If you do it all at once, you’ll have no clue where to begin if there are problems and conflicts.
It will cause driver problems but probably not fatally so. I recently built a 100% new computer and used the master hard drive from the old one to boot it up and transfer data. It didn’t like it, but I just uninstalled and reinstalled drivers and everything worked out fine. YMMV
The one thing I do when swapping Windows hard-drives between machines is turn the video down: clear the desktop of all but the basic four icons (put the rest into a folder for now) and then turn the screen settings down to 640x480, 16 colors, turn off hardware accelleration, uninstall the videocard, and then shutdown the computer and then do the swap. The reason is because Windows will not start if it can not display video, and this puts the video settings into software-mode (should be independent of video hardware).
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However, if I’m doing a system rebuild I usually will backup my hard drive and reinstall my OS from fresh as well. If I’m getting lockups or errors after a system build, it helps to know that the OS isn’t likely to blame.
Also, if you’ve had problems with multiple components that don’t usually fail, I’d look at your power supply before blowing a load on money and time on the issue. I’ve seen a lot of cheap (and some expensive and recognized brand name) power supplies turn into “walking wounded” which look like they’re working however some of the voltages are out of spec and will cause intermittent errors and lockups.
While Windows (especially XP) can usually figure out a motherboard swap, I’ve found that it’s better to reinstall from the ground up. This is why I favor a two hard drive approach: install Windows fresh on a new (or existing empty) hard drive, then stick your old hard drive in as a slave. You’ll have to reinstall all your software, but you’ll have all your old files right there so you should be able to recreate everything as it was without too much trouble.
This is fresh in my mind, as I recently upgraded. While Windows XP was able to run with the new hardware, I was getting some sluggish performance and occasional crashes/errors which seemed to be related to either the video card or the memory. Reinstalling from scratch on a separate hard drive was a hassle, but now everything is back the way it was and running 100% smoothly. I’d rather spend a few hours now reinstalling than struggle with an unstable system for the next couple of years.
Well, I just bought the componants, and they should all ber here in less thn two weeks. I would like to be able to do a clean install, but I really can’t afford a new HD as well (I only gots one right now), and back up ALL my stuff on CD’s (no DVD burner either), reformatting and reinstalling would be a HUGE bitch. And I mean HUGE.
Do you have any idea how monay gigs of porn I have?
Oh, and for those interested, here are my new specs:
Soyo KT600 Dragon Plus with an Athlon XP 3200 (upgraded from a no-name moo with Athlon XP 1800)
XFX GeForce FX 5700 256 MB (upgraded from a GeForce Ti4200 64 MB)
Another 512 MB stick of good RAM (to add to the current 512 stick of good RAM.)
I wish my RM wasn’t so pricey ($100), but I always get non-cheapo kind, and hey, it comes with a lifetime warrenty! I’ve already replaced the current stick in there because of I think a problem with the mobo. I don’t trust ‘generic’ or ‘house’ brand. It’s got slower timings, and will likely screw up. Not worth saving the money.
Wow, my new computer is remarkably similar to your new one in all respects except my Athlon processor is a little slower. Like I said above, mine booted ok with the old drive. Additionally, I never really formatted mine after that. I just did a direct hard drive copy to the new one so it is essentially the same for these purposes. You are going to have some driver problems but going into the system device manager and deleting the ones with the yellow mark (driver error) and rebooting (repeat, repeat) will fix 90% of. The biggest problem I has was with the video card (almost the same as yours) which sort of worked from the beginning but kept doing screwy things. XP won’t install that for you. You have to work with the CD and some of those drivers can be really screwy. It took me a couple of hours to get that to work right.
You do not have to reformat to reinstall Windows. What you need to do is stop the Windows installation process from finding the old version. So you rename c:\windows, c:\documents and settings, and c:\windows\win.ini, then install XP as normal.
Oh yeah, I forgot I can reinstall w/o a reformat. But do I need to do all that? I thought it I just started up with a windows install CD in the drive, change my BIOS to boot from CD, then restart I can choose the ‘reinstall w/o reformatting’ option. Since the driver information is stored in windows, won’t that basically start fresh with a new Windows ready to accept new drivers?
Yes it will. It is not exactly the same as a fresh install but it may work for you. Personally, I would (and did) take the reinstallation of your existing XP install rather than doing that. The new install method is going to leave you with a massive loss of settings, shortcuts, application problems, etc.
If you do it that way, you should have two options: an upgrade install or an over-the-top install. The only problem with either option is that if the whole thing goes horribly wrong you can’t back out.
