Is it possible to replace mobo & CPU w/o reinstalling OS?

[Allen7]

I am going to upgrade my P3-933 to a P4-1.8GA on an Asus P4B266.

I know the only way to do this is to reintall Win2K, but I have read somewhere that you can do this with a utility and I can't find it now.

Anyone knows about this? I am just too lazy to backup and reinstall everything again, plus I always forget something when backup and when I realized it it's too late

Thanks in advance.

Allen

 

[stankonia3000]

you could try deleteing all entries under the enum key in the registry...afterwards youll have to run the add new hardware wizard

 

[Athlon4all]

<< you could try deleteing all entries under the enum key in the registry...afterwards youll have to run the add new hardware wizard >>

Nope. That's Win 9x. Really, the only thing that you could try is deleteing every single device in device manager, shut off the computer, put in the new mobo+CPU and then everything may be redetected but no guarantee's. I would personally just re-install.

 

[panhead49]

its a big pain......like what was said above, everything has to be redetected...........and then it might not run right......i know it wont run as fast as a new install...

 

[AndyHui]

You might be able to get away with just a simple hardware replacement, but I really recommend a full reinstall.

If nothing else, it gets rid of OS bloat and leaves you with a fresh, new system.

 

[jsmckenna45431]

I've gotten it to work once in ME by manually removing every device from the device manager then replacing the board. When it rebooted, it detected and installed all of the new devices, but there is quite a bit of bloating involved. XP was a major headache and turned out to be more trouble than just reformatting. I finally reinstalled the OS and it was well worth it. The performance and stability gain was quite noticable.

Jeff

 

[bowie71]

it is possible, but first manually remove all devices and motherboard resources using device manager, then you'll be fine, otherwise you'll get so much hassles dealing with the locking up and BSOD. It only works with Win98 SE and Win ME. If you do it with WinXP, you're totally will get a messege to uninstall all new hardware, try to avoid doing this in winXP

 

[Allen7]

Thanks for all the advises. I did try delete everything in the devices manager, but it didn't work. So I just reinstalled it with WinXP.

One thing to keep in mind with P4B266, the CMedia driver (sound) on the Asus CD is no good. Once I installed the driver on CD, WinXP locks up. I discover this after couple fresh install..........what a pain. So I down loaded WinXP driver from Asus website and everything works fine now, WinXp update even found a newer driver and update it w/o trouble.

My Intel box is running at 2078 @ default voltage now temp is cool at 40-deg. going to try more O/C tomorrow and see how much it can do.

Allen

 

[mis3]

Yes, I, too, will do a fresh install just because I like to keep my system CLEAN.

By the way, how is the quaility of the on-board audio (C-media) of P4B266 as compared to some Sound_Blaster cards?

 

[Allen7]

The onboard CMedia 6-channel sound is pretty good, it replaced my Soundblaster Live! Platinum.

I am having a very strange problem now with my setup, about every 7~8 seconds, my computer freeze for 1/2 second. My means about every 7~8 seconds my mouse cursor stop and jumps away, or sounds from speaker repeats for a very short brief period. Anyone knows why?

Allen

 

[Allen7]

Problem solved, I had the refresh rate set at 8-second intervel for the iPanel....stupid me

 

[Zap]

I've never tried using Win2k or XP, but with previous Win95/98/Me it is possible to change just about any hardware without reinstalling Windows. We upgrade customer's machines all the time, and if we had to reinstall Windows every time, we'd be doing a lot fewer upgrades.

 

[Allen7]

I can do that with Win95/98/ME, but Win2K/XP is different story.