Paging the Wise Old Wizard, or anyone: need tech advic

:)I would perhaps like to update to a better motherboard, c.p.u., and RAM. But keep the same old case, OS, vid/sound cards, HDD, power supply, etc.However, I now have a whole bunch of flight/train/racing sims installed. Along with a great many patches, add-ons, configuration file changes, and improvements which I don't want to have to reinstall and reconfigure. So am wondering if I take the tower in to the local computer builders, and have them replace the MB, c.p.u. and RAM, is it likely that when I get the rebuilt system home I would then find the simulations are no longer working right? Or is it instead more likely *not* to have to reinstall and rebuild them all?

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RE: Paging the Wise Old Wizard, or anyone: need tech a, Brad 110, Feb-11-03, 10:17 PM, (1) RE: Paging the Wise Old Wizard, or anyone: need tech a, derekmorton, Feb-11-03, 10:20 PM, (2) RE: Paging the Wise Old Wizard, or anyone: need tech a, CWA13000, Feb-11-03, 10:30 PM, (3) RE: Paging the Wise Old Wizard, or anyone: need tech a, UtilityInfielder, Feb-12-03, 00:16 AM, (4) RE: Paging the Wise Old Wizard, or anyone: need tech a, oztrains, Feb-12-03, 02:36 AM, (5) RE: Paging the Wise Old Wizard, or anyone: need tech a, OTTODAD, Feb-12-03, 06:29 AM, (6) RE: Paging the Wise Old Wizard, or anyone: need tech a, UtilityInfielder, Feb-13-03, 02:19 AM, (7)

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As a computer professional, I think this is bad pratice. Windows OS cares what hardware it is running on, and not reinstalling it on the new hardware can (almost certainly will) cause random problems. Windows has enough random problems without intorducing the opportunity for more. In the long run, you will be better off doing a proper reinstall on the new system because you will have a more stable system. I don't say it can't be done, only that it is poor practice.
Brad Meyer

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Hi Bill,If you have 98/ME, then on the first boot after the upgrade, the OS will just install the hardware it needs and keep going.
For TS you will need to run 'mprofile.exe', don't know about the others.If you have 2000/XP, and you change the IDE controller chip, the system will NOT boot, it will get a blue screen on boot.
I am not 100% sure how to fix this one.Derek

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I'm no wizard but I did what you want to do.I put in an Asus A7NX8 mother board and a new hard drive. My son copied my old hard drive and then renamed them cause I thought the old one was making noise like the bearings were going bad. If us amatures can do it there is no reason why the pros can't! I read a lot of stuff on the help forems like Toms hardware and Crucials Ram pages and the Asus and Abit forems and alot of people said that you should have a fresh install of operating sys but I basically had no problems. I did, however, back up as much as I could everywhare I could before we started. I even put back up of my train, car and route collection on two other machines on our home network.

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Ok, thanks guys, based on that I think I could go ahead then, but will have to consider some more if its worth the risk. Otherwise I would have upgraded long ago. Once I reinstalled Win95 for the 6th or 7th time right over top of the old, and got an .VXD error message and the sys would not boot. But the local 'puter shop fixed that without my losing anything. The first question they asked me was "did you just remove AOL from your system", and I said "Yep", and they said "thought so" .
William H. KingWin98SE
P3 1000
GeF4 4200

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I've just done something very similar, and it's not all that difficult to do yourself. The trick is that the operating system needs to be told about the new hardware. Windows 2000 is the most stable of the OS's currently available, and it will simply ask for the install disk - then select "Repair" WITHOUT using your emergency disks. You may need new drivers for the new cards, but they can usually be loaded after the OS re-loads.If you're upgrading the boot disk, I recommend using a mirror program (like Norton Ghost - and there are freeware equivalents on Tucows). If you're not technical, the computer shop should be able to do it for a modest fee.Unless you re-assign drive letters, all your old applications will work. Even MSTS!

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LAST EDITED ON Feb-12-03 AT 06:42 AM (EDT)

I like that new "Handle" somebody in the Forum gave me recently, abbreviated it looks like WOW ! Most replies to your question are on target, but let me just summarize them and add my bit.If it is WIN 98SE your are running at the moment then changing to another Motherboard, adding RAM, etc and keeping the Hard Disk/s should present no problem, the machine booting into WIN 98SE as before, the P&P BIOS automatically recognising Memory Upgrades and changes in what is connected to the 2 IDE Channels and if there was no change with the latter, allocate the same Drive Letters to previous Logical Drive Partitions if you had some.If your existing BIOS is customised, by you or somebody else, then make sure that the BIOS on the new MoBo is changed accordingly.The only problem I can see is that your Graphics Card may not be compatible with the AGP slot on the new Motherboard and if you have old ISA slot cards on your old MoBo, the new one probably has none, you would have to replace the ISA Cards with PCI versions.WIN 2000 / NT / XP do things a little different but not that much to prevent you using everything you got on your existing Hard Drive, if MSTS and other Games installed are not on DRIVE C: but in other Logical Drive Partitions, which is something I always recommend doing just for such an occasion or worse ! Re-installing MS O/S uses Drive C: only by Default, not touching other Drive Partitions.If everything you got is on DRIVE C: I suggest you get yourself a new reasonably sized 7200 RPM drive which will improve Disk Access speeds and with it the performance of slow-coach MSTS.The old disk can then be made the MASTER on the second IDE Channel and the CD, etc SLAVED to it. Having 2 Hard Disks on the same IDE Channel should be avoided, as should be slaving anything else to the Hard Disk in the #1-IDE socket. Your local COMP-SHOP will know what I am talking about.Having then installed your existing WIN O/S other than 98SE on the new Hard Drive (and if it is not WIN-XP why not do that at the same time ?) and the O/S is working, Re-Install your Games to the Drive / Partition they were in before and RESTORE all your stuff from the now second, old Hard Drive, which can then be used as a BACK-UP disk, including the O/S using Norton Ghost Cloning, providing you have suitably sized Logical Drive Partitions on it !In the case of the latter, there is also the Question of "File System" to be considered, FAT32 or NTFS, depending on what the one on the old Hard Disk is and possible some Driver Updates ?Can't think of anything else, GOOD LUCK ! Hope it's not going to cost too much ! O t t o.

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Ok, I read the signals as "proceed with caution", but by all means proceed with the upgrade.Why not XP at the same time, you asked. Well I need 3 vid cards in the system (one primary GeF4 128 and two secondary VoodooII SLI'ed together for the Red Baron flightsim). The only XP voodoo II drivers are 3rd party hacked which don't work with some computers. Mainly just cold feet, I guess .Next time I'll take the plunge and buy a whole new system with the latest OS
Already have a 7200 RPM drive with an older 5500 RPM second HDD slaved to it on the first IDE. Obviously, you advise this was not the way to go. Is there going to be a large or small benefit of me now moving the slave on IDE1 over to master on IDE2? " If your existing BIOS is customised, by you or somebody else, then make sure that the BIOS on the new MoBo is changed accordingly. "Caused me to check everything in BIOS where I was shocked to find master VGA choice as PCI instead of AGP. In other words, the V2 cards in PCI slots were by default being chosen instead of the GeF4 in some 2D applications (not the D3D applications which all gave a choice one way or another of which to use). Everything else is pretty much default in BIOS.

" Having then installed your existing WIN O/S other than 98SE on the new Hard Drive (and if it is not WIN-XP why not do that at the same time ?) and the O/S is working, Re-Install your Games to the Drive / Partition they were in before and RESTORE all your stuff from the now second, old Hard Drive, which can then be used as a BACK-UP disk, including the O/S using Norton Ghost Cloning, providing you have suitably sized Logical Drive Partitions on it ! "Roger, copy all that and understand. Except for one thing. If I wish to change to XP after all, would this be the gameplan: 1) Remove the old HDD's, install a new HDD in IDE1, format and install XP on it. 2) Update drivers to get hardware (printers, scanner, etc.) working. 3) Power down the system in order to install the old HDD in IDE2 and slave the CD to it. 4) But I'm not sure if I can now safely power back up with two bootable drives in the system. Afraid of what bad things might happen, although I don't know enough to know what I need be afraid of in doing this. 5) Restore the FS scenery and TS routes and such from the old HDD over to the new HDD (in same partition letters as before). 6) Erase old HDD as use it now as complete backup for everything using Ghost.
-------------------Update: Still need the advice, but wife Cathy has reminded me that since XMAS this system has had added to it: 3D glasses, TrackIR, and feedback chair; so budget is such that the system upgrade must come maybe 3 months down the road, instead of right now. Still gonna do the same thing at that time though Thanks!

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