sindustrial777

In the near future I will be a new ABIT motherboard (see below) and this will be my first time installing a motherboard. My friend said you have to wipe your hard drive and everything before you do so, is this true? Are there other drastic measures that I should know about that have to do with this installation?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813127234

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drz01

Yes windows will go crazy and will not boot if there is major changes to your hardware, and a motherboard swap would be a major change.. There is a file that you could wipe clean and let windows rediscover hardware but this will only work if you could get your machine to boot. But the best way is to back up your data get, drivers and reformat.

Android412

It was pre SP2 but I updated my cpu and mobo and all I had to do was re input my key (I think, maybe reactivate). I didn't have to reinstall thats for sure.

sindustrial777

What about if I bought a new Hard drive, i was planning on doing so anyhow since my video editing and games are quickly filling my current one. The big problem with backup for me is my lack of floppy drive, any way to back-up to dvd or something?

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ray_gillespie

That would be ok, as long as you used that as your primary hard disk. It's not a bad option (tho expensive if you do it every time!) and means you get a nice new disk and also you can use the old one to back stuff up.

Good luck!

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kcnychief

I believe if you prepped your machine for sysprep (which would yank all unqiue features to your PC anyways) you wouldn't have to re-install Windows.

Worth a shot at least before going through with it

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lancer

, was that supposed to be a joke? even if you had a floppy i doubt it would help you backup unless it was just a couple of .doc files or something. DVD is certainly the way to go, and better yet a new drive to install the os on, then attach the old one as a secondary and wipe the old os off it, when you have installed the new one.

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Hack*MMS

I have been lucky enough on a few instances, when I have replace a M/B, I didnt have to reformat. But, if you do, and are going to buy a new hard drive, set your old hard drive up as a slave drive and copy files from there.

sindustrial777

I suppose so, its just my pc kept asking for a floppy but I wasnt really thinking.. i see dvd option now.

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lancer

i'm sorry i hope i wasn't rude.... man i make us it guys look bad, i feel like the IT guy for SNL now haha

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LeeJend

you can often install a new mb without reinstalling windows. the details are in another thread with inoputs from several pepole who have been succefful, including me. i cant retype itall left hanbded so you gfet to do a search om the old thread.

the key is to go into devive manager and uninstall all the hardware devices before swapping mb's. then there is nothing to conflict with. but as always, back uop critical data first. or better yet image the entiredisk. then you can try multuiple times.

.

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sindustrial777

nah lancer you didnt come off as rude, I'm just am totally oblivious on of this kind of upgrade . Thanks Leejend nice to see you're still in the forums with that nice little injury you got there . How do I go about backing up this critical info? Any thread links to similar topics? I'll look myself but a nudge in the right direction could help The "device manager uninstall" process sounds simple enough but I don't want to paint myself into a corner when dealing with expensive PC stuff.

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LeeJend

found one

http://forum.osnn.net/showthread.php...mb+replacement

heres the one i wanted:

http://forum.osnn.net/showthread.php...ght=mb+upgrade

windows has a transfer system utility. use thaat. MAKE ABSOLUTELY sure you get any music and video liscences. they should be in my documents.

back-up,basically copy to another machine or burn to dvd all of:
save your browser links
email archives
all of my doc's especially liscences!!!!!!!
large upgrades you have, a lot faster than downloading again.

this is why i always try the install with the original hd. too much to loose. best deal is to get a $50 120-160 gig drive and image the original to it so you loose nothing.

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sindustrial777

ok cool, I might go with a backup drive then but i'll have to buy one. The computer I have now was a prebuilt one that has a ATA133 drive but my board supports SATA too, they will work together fine right? I can clone the image into the SATA from the other drive?

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LeeJend

1) sata and pata work fine together.

2) You can clone from a pata to a sata (I just did)

3) Do not boot with both drives installed as boot drives. Windows causes problems if you do this. once you make the image don't boot to windows with both installed.

Use image software that boots from floppy or CD/DVD. I use all WD drives so their utility is all I need. Ghost is recommended by the other folks here.

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