Need to reload XP if moving from P4T-E to P4T533?

I've got a P4T-E system that went down for some unknown reason. I was
going to swap out the motherboard so I don't have to bother reloading
the operating system + all programs (a 2 day job, usually).

I know that XP loads a specific HAL for the motherboard chipset. Would
that be necessary when going from P4T-E to P4T533?

Any simple way to do that?

R wrote:
> I've got a P4T-E system that went down for some unknown reason. I was
> going to swap out the motherboard so I don't have to bother reloading
> the operating system + all programs (a 2 day job, usually).
>
> I know that XP loads a specific HAL for the motherboard chipset. Would
> that be necessary when going from P4T-E to P4T533?
>
> Any simple way to do that?

1) Verify BIOS settings. Make sure ACPI is enabled (I see a Suspend To
RAM setting I might enable on the P4T533). ACPI is important, because
you could really mess things up if the power management methods differ
between old install and new. I'm not experienced enough to tell you all
the horrors that await, if that happened.

2) For my home systems, I clone (make a copy with Partition Magic) the
original boot partition. That is in case of accidents, you have something
to fall back on. No matter how methodical you are, stuff happens, like
bad interfaces on your new board, damaging something. I have had to fall
back to my backup, on at least two occasions (procedural mistakes on my
part).

3) Only have the boot disk connected, during the rest of the procedure,
whether using the original disk, or using the clone disk. That way, only
the target disk receives the "benefit" of the procedure.

4) Do a repair install. Basically, what the instructions here are
telling you, is to avoid the UI trap, of entering the recovery
console. Stay out of the recovery console.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

5) After repair install, you'll need Service Packs. I have the latest
Service Pack for my OS, already downloaded. Have that ahead of time.
You can even slipstream that into a copy of your installer disk,
with programs like Autostreamer. I have my original Win2K disk, and
I also have a slipstreamed Win2K SP4 I made with autostreamer.

6) With the Service Pack in place, you could tidy up the device drivers.
(You could do drivers then SP2, or SP2 then drivers, and I'd try the
latter.)

7) Now that you have a LAN driver, you can connect the LAN cable to the
Internet. Go to Windows Update, and get Security Updates. Don't take
Driver Updates from Microsoft - nothing but grief. Get hardware
drivers from Asus, or find them on the chip maker's respective sites,
not from Microsoft.

Once the chaos of installation is finished, all your programs should
still be intact, email database still there, settings OK. Connect the
rest of your disk drives, before using applications etc. (Since all my
apps are currently installed on C:, I don't have anything to worry about
in that regard - my apps live in my OS partition, not convenient for
backups, but smoother for occasions like a repair install.)

A repair install wipes the Service Pack (takes you back to the OS state as
provided on whatever install CD you are using for the repair install). It
also removes the Security Updates and patches. So you have to put the
Service Packs and Security Updates back, as well as install whatever
chipset drivers are needed. If you're on dialup, that is a PITA.

Now, if you are a "chance taker", and you happened to be using the
default Microsoft IDE driver on the old system, you can also just
boot with the existing OS, and install drivers to that. I've tried that
once, and it worked, in the sense that I could boot. But I did have
longer term issues, in that something wasn't quite right with AGP, and
I could never figure out just what was wrong.

You can afford to be a "chance taker", if you have a backup

My best guess,
Paul