Not all mobo replacements require a new install of Windows...it depends on how different the new mobo is to the one previously used.

You can always just give it a shot and see if it works or not. You may need to use safe mode and reinstall the proper motherboard drivers though.

If it does not work, you can slave the drive to copy your programs and data over and then reinstall Windows.

 

Hi robebcan

Yes you can keep the same setup.

Very likely you will need to do a repair install.

To prepare for that I would Slipstream an SP3 CD. If you are at SP3 and your XP CD is SP2 then this is very important. DO NOT try to overlay (repair install) an SP3 OS with an SP2 Disk!

I reccomend:

nLite http://www.nliteos.com/ to do the slipstreaming

and use

Driver Packs http://driverpacks.net/DriverPacks/ Get them all
The Driver packs will allow most all SATA controllers to be installed without the F6 and a floppy. These driver packs will also install almost any Video Audio and other drivers.

These next first steps will help to possibly eliminate some issues on first boot with new MB.

The very last thing you should do before shutting down to to install new MB.

1. Unhook all external devices USB etc except Mouse and Keyboard

2. Boot to safe mode and uninstall most all HW especially:
Video adapter
Network Adapter
the entire USB Tree
Sound and Audio
Modems
IDE ATA Controlers
And anything else possible except keyboard and mouse

The above will get some of the old HW out of the way for new to install and is the reason I said you "May" be able to boot up the new MB without an overlay repair install!

Avoid letting the computer boot back up as you do not want any HW detections until it boots to the new MB.

It may boot into Safe Mode (it may not) like generic environment. If it does then I would start the XP SP3 CD from Windows and chose Upgrade.

If it will not boot generically then Boot from the CD and do the second offer to Repair where Windows finds an existing installation.

The main reason you may absoloutly need to Overlay/repair install is the SATA drivers.

Do it to it! And let me know how it comes out!

Mike

 

Wow......great answers for me to ponder over, and very encouraging.

I was unable to disconnect any devices on the "last" power-up, because this whole scenario started when I was unable to power up yesterday (The On/Off and reset switches didn't do anything.....no fan, no lights, no action.....the power supply is good).

I'm looking at a ASUS P5QL Pro as a replacement, but heard that it hates booting from IDE drives. I have 2 IDE drives......one with XP Home, and one with XP Pro. The XP Pro is the one that has irreplaceable programs.

Would this work????
Do the initial power-up with XP Home in the Master drive. After everything is sorted out, power down and make the XP Pro drive the Master. Power up again and "Repair install" with my slipstream CD for XP Pro.

(The bottom line is to keep the registry entries for my programs associated with the XP Pro unchanged and active/available).

Any concerns? Thanks

 

I did not know you were doing this under the gun!

Would this work????
Do the initial power-up with XP Home in the Master drive. After everything is sorted out, power down and make the XP Pro drive the Master. Power up again and "Repair install" with my slipstream CD for XP Pro.

Yes it should work. I assume the XP Home is more replaceable (has less important data).

I would do it this way.

Bootup XP Home F8 to Safe Mode cancel any HW detection which will try to run. Then do the uninstall procedure from Device mng as I cover in the other post and reboot, if it don't work then overlay/repair install it.

If this works with Home it should also work on Pro!

I only advise this as sometimes (very small amout of times) there can be issues with a repair install.

Your call!

Mike

 

Thanks Mike,

It will be a few days, but I will try to do it verbatim as you suggested. I will let you know the outcome.

Thanks for the ideas!

Bruce

 

If it does not work, you can slave the drive to copy your programs and data over and then reinstall Windows.

mt2002 - can you explain this please? My understanding is that copying the programs won't work because a fresh Install wipes the registry clean and requires installation of each program again (not copying). I thought that only data could be copied between drives/OS etc.

thanks
bruce

 

mt2002 - can you explain this please? My understanding is that copying the programs won't work because a fresh Install wipes the registry clean and requires installation of each program again (not copying).

Whether or not it works depends on how the programs are installed. For larger programs it may not work; for smaller programs it might. This is what I always do personally which is why I decided to post it as an option.

If the software uses the registry, you can always make a backup of it to restore it after the reinstall. I have never heard of anyone doing this but am interested if it works or not

I would go for the repair install first to see if it works.

 

Okay.........here is where things stand now. BAD NEWS

Neither of my IDE hard drives are accessible. They are physically installed, but Windows either doesn't "see" them, or Windows reports that the "E:\ is not accessible".

Here is the story _______

I had to take the computer to a shop because the ASUS P5QL Pro refused to boot from IDE port. (Apparently, the error message was something like "transaction error #6" with a screen full of text.)

The shop installed Windows XP Home on a SATA drive and did a fresh install using the SATA drive (my IDE boot drive remained connected to the IDE port).

I have the computer here at home again, so I installed my 2 IDE drives on the IDE ribbon, with one selected as Master. The SATA drive is the boot drive.

I have done 3 boots. On the first boot, I noticed that neither of my IDE drives were displayed on WIndows. On the second boot, I looked at the BIOS setup and saw both IDE drives listed there (but curiously, they were not identified by manuf and model number). When I exited the BIOS to continue into Windows, neither of the IDE drives were displayed on Windows (again). On the 3rd boot, finally one IDE drive showed on Windows (My Computer), but when selected, it displays "E:\drive is not accessible. File or directory is damaged or corrupted". This is wrong, because I know the data is all there and good.

If you have any ideas, please make it easy by referring to the SATA drive as drive A, my IDE drives as drive B (master) and drive C (slave).

Thanks for any suggestions.
Any ideas now?

 

Most of the time you can replace the motherboard, then immediately do a "Repair Install" of XP to bring it back to life.

Scroll down to "Replace a failed motherboard" for the proceedure.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824125

Repair install with screenshots
http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/How-to-repair-Windows-XP-t138.html

 

Okay Mumbodog, maybe I'm an idiot, but when I only have my IDE drive attached to the mobo, the screen comes up with "invalid transaction #6" or something like that, and a screen full of text. Therefore, I can't get the mobo to acknowledge the drive.

 

When connecting just the one IDE drive, are you disabling the SATA controller in the BIOS and making sure that SATA is not in the boot order?
You wouldn't think it'd matter with no drive connected, but you never know

Also, some IDE drives have 4 jumper settings:
Master
Master with no slave AKA Single Drive
Slave
Cable Select
If it's one that needs the Single Drive setting that might be an issue.

HTH

Jerry

 

Well, there is nothing that is 100% except a fully tested backup, but the repair process is pretty safe. Only way to be 100% sure would be to clone the drive, then run the repair on the clone. If something does go wrong, you still have the original drive.

If you are doing the Repair install on the XP Pro on Drive D:, nothing on C should be affected - unless you pick the wrong partition of course.
Data and Programs on D: should also not be affected. Just make sure you are doing the Repair of an existing installation and not a new install. And do not delete, create, or format any partitions. It always asks for confirmation, but if you get asked, you are following the wrong path.

Good Luck,

Jerry

 

"is there any chance that any data in the drive will be overwritten?"

You should copy important data to another location if it is irreplaceable.

Data should be safe on a repair, but one should always play it safe with important data.

No user data is overwritten during a repair, only Operating system files.

After the repair and successful boot into windows,you may have to install your new motherboard drivers, check Device Manager.

 

Thanks to both replies. I have done a repair install before with no data overwrite problems, so I shouldn't have wasted the question. I just got antsy watching the screen load files!

I have reread all the replies and have enough to try this tomorrow!

I'll be back with my results for everyone to see.
Thanks

 

GOOD NEWS!

I was able to Repair install my old XP Pro OS on my partitioned IDE Drive. The SATA drive also works fine.

HOWEVER ---------

The MSI Video CD install disk freezes the computer when I select "VGA drivers and utilities". therefore the video screen is very poor until I get that fixed. I copied the CD files to my hard drive and tried to install from there, with the same lock-up result.

Thanks

 

Go to MSI website and download the latest driver.

http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=downloadindex

First check add/remove programs, if there is any MSI software installed, uninstall it and reboot, then install the latest available software/driver from MSI.

 

Did you install all of the Motherboard drivers after the repair install?

Asus P5QL Pro Downloads

HTH

Jerry

 

Yes, I installed all the ASUS P5QL Pro utilities. Thanks.

I went to the MSI website (thank you!) and signed up for Live Update. Their diagnosis software detected no driver or utilities installed (of course). I downloaded the .zip file for my video board -- but don't know how to actually "install" this driver, even if I manage to unzip it (where should I locate it so it unzips in a useful location?)

Secondly, when I went to the Windows Install Hardware Wizard, it lists 2 yellow "?" at the top of my list of hardware. I suspect that one of these is the video board, but I have no way of determining that. How do I find out what the "?" symbols pertain to?

Thanks.

 

"where should I locate it so it unzips in a useful location?"

You can unzip it to any folder you like, I usually create one called "Downloads" on the C drive for this type of stuff.

Unzip the file to the folder, then go to the folder and execute the installer file, away you go.

As for the unknown devices, sometime these programs can identify them

http://www.zhangduo.com/udi.html

http://www.halfdone.com/ukd/

 

Unfortunately, downloading, unzipping, running driver setup.exe resulted in the same result.......computer is totally frozen (not even Ctrl-Alt-Del works).

However, I did not do one of the things you suggested, because I'm not sure what will happen. I did not run the ATI UninstAll.exe file because I'd like to know how any video will be displayed if all video drivers are deleted. Also, this ATI driver was installed successfully on my other HD which was being used as the boot disk, when the mobo was first installed last week. I have changed the BIOS to boot from my preferred disk (which is the one I'm trying to install the driver to). I hope that's not too confusing?

I can't think that this is healthy for the computer if I lock it up too many more times.

Any other ideas? Thanks.

 

"I did not run the ATI UninstAll.exe file because I'd like to know how any video will be displayed if all video drivers are deleted"

It should be safe to do, windows will just use a default driver, display may not look very good untill you install the new driver.

 

Same result......computer freezes.

I ran the program, and, afterwards, I deleted anything that looked like "ATi" from all my hard drives. I turned off all security software. I couldn't think of anything else to do. I ran the setup.exe file, and got the same lockup again.

I will close this thread now, and move this specific problem to another forum that is more appropriate (drivers?, video? something like that), since the XP repair/install after motherboard issue is solved.

(Thanks........I will check here to see if you have any other suggestions on the driver install problem also)

 

I found the answer.

I used the Device Manager to reinstall the driver on one of my yellow "?". I used the driver that I had downloaded from the website. This avoided the use of the Setup software that came with the driver (from the website and the CD installation disk).

Beware
I tried using the Hunter software to find the Unidentified devices on the Device Manager, but it caused my computer to lock-up also.

Thanks everybody for your contributions.