August 6, 2004

9:46 AM

Risks in putting a win2k drive in a new motherboard? I understand this is possible by either doing a repair/reinstall and pulling the drive out before reboot or using MS's sysprep tool, but has anyone done this? I'm assuming this is a risky operation and I should probably ghost the drive before attempting it, but if anyone has some tips or lessons of experience to share I would appreciate it.
posted by skallas to (6 comments total)

Haven't done it with Win2k, but I've done it with other OS's (including XP and 98) and it took it pretty well. Just be prepared with your mobo's driver CD or download the drivers from the mobo website before you pull the drive out of the old box.

Your system won't be as stable as a fresh install would be (since 1) it won't be optimized for the proc/mobo combination in the registry, although a repair may fix this. and 2) it will have all kinds of old spare drivers sitting around taking up space and occasionally inadvertantly catching a call that was meant for your current driver. #2 is more of a problem on '98, which had bad driver handling code IIRC.)
posted by SpecialK at 9:51 AM on August 6, 2004

Format, reinstall. It's the only way to be sure. I did this on a Win2K server and it just didn't work right until I started from ground zero.
posted by kindall at 10:59 AM on August 6, 2004

Here's some instructions on the Ars Technica message board. When I replaced my motherboard, I followed this and it worked flawlessly. I'm still on my five-year-old Win 2K install.
posted by smackfu at 1:03 PM on August 6, 2004

I did this with a server, moved the installtion onto a RAID array and changed to a dual processor HAL at the same time. Worked fine. Phew.
posted by ed\26h at 3:49 PM on August 6, 2004

Done it with many versions of Windows, when there wasn't time to do a clean install/rebuild. Standard practice is to go direct to safe mode on first power-up, Control Panel/System Devices, and delete all the old device drivers. Then boot normally and let it re-recognize all the hardware. This won't work if the version of Windows on the HD is so old it can't recognize all the hardware on the spiffy new mobo. If the Windows version is only middling old compare to the new hardware the process will work but you may end up with some lowest-common-denominator drivers in place (e.g. your new Ultra El Screamo video comes up in 640 x 480 x 16 color mode.) You'll have to fix these by hand.
posted by jfuller at 5:36 PM on August 6, 2004

The ars technica shortcut works but there really should be a warning about editing your boot.ini file if the drives/partitions don't match up.

Man, why doesnt the recovery console have a text editor?
posted by skallas at 7:03 PM on August 6, 2004