Switching Motherboards

I'm getting a new mobo delivered in a few hours, and I want to get the thing up and running WoW as soon as possible (kekeke). If it's at all possible for me to skip the 10 hour Windows + WoW installation, I'll do it.

The best advice I've found online is this:

"Before you swap out the current motherboard go to device manager and select the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller and select your current storage controller. Right click, select update driver and select install from a list or specific location. Click don't search I will choose the driver to install and select the standard dual channel IDE controller.
This will prevent the inaccessable boot device blue screen. I have done this multiple times on different platforms with no problems.

Also I found that booting the first time with the new motherboard is best done in the Safe mode where XP will install the drivers it needs and at the same time you can install the new motherboard drivers from its CD.

This saved me doing a repair or a reinstall of XP. My whole system came right up and worked great and very stable."

I use XP Home, for reference. I'm not unwilling to reinstall if it really is best in the end, it's just such a pain.

Well, if I HAVE to, my HDD is partitioned into two 60GB partitions. I can just reformat one partition and keep all my junk in the second, right? I think yes, I just want to know for sure, fuck any surprises.

I'm such a noob =(

If you're not throwing your old mobo in the garbage immediately after, don't bother messing with anything, and just plug it all together to see what happens. I've swapped around hard drives and motherboards for years, and never had a problem. Just makes sure everything is off when you start switching things around (by the switch on the power supply, not just shutdown)... I hope you're not too much of a noob to realize that. :p

No, I'm not that big a noob, I put my current system together. Since the motherboard has so much shit on it (I'm using the current motherboard's LAN port in my home network) I don't want to turn on Windows and see like a million exclamation points. I haven't worked much with XP, but my last experience was silky smooth.

I'm still traumatized from working with 95 and 3.11.

what kinda shitty machine do you have that takes ten hours to install winxp? mine takes an hour tops :(

even less during an unattended install (god damn I love my windows disc)

if you're switching chipsets between mobo's (like intel to via) then you want to format. if everythings the same you "should" be able to get away without one but it's always a good idea.

I was exaggerating, but WinXP + WoW + over a year's worth of updates really takes a long, long time.

Anyway, I'm switching from an Athlon XP to an Athlon 64. I'm thinking more and more like I'm just going to format a partition and do a clean Windows install on it. Just bleah, I just did a full reinstall a couple of months ago.

i wasn't talking cpu chipsets i was talking mobo chipsets. just reformat or you'll end up with problems like burkey.

OH! I'm going from an Asus to an MSI.

I'll reformat =(

If there are two partitions, and only one has the system files on it (the other one is a dump for my pictures, music, and video), I only have to reformat the first right? I don't have a way to back up those files, and would rather keep my like hundred One Piece episodes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mzo

I was exaggerating, but WinXP + WoW + over a year's worth of updates really takes a long, long time.

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Look through the folders and see if you can dig up any files that look like anything you may think is an update, same with your save files. You can usually put that stuff someplace else and restore it when it comes to reinstalling your game.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mzo

OH! I'm going from an Asus to an MSI.

I'll reformat =(

If there are two partitions, and only one has the system files on it (the other one is a dump for my pictures, music, and video), I only have to reformat the first right? I don't have a way to back up those files, and would rather keep my like hundred One Piece episodes.

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yes. if your 2nd partition (the non-boot one) is only music and porn you don't need to touch it.