I've heard that as part of MS's effort to keep XP secure that they
try to detect extensive hardware changes. That obviously would
happen when swapping motherboards. I don't want to spend
hours loading XP and programs from scratch. Is there any way to
keep XP happy?

"_R" <_(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news(E-Mail Removed)...
> I've heard that as part of MS's effort to keep XP secure that they
> try to detect extensive hardware changes. That obviously would
> happen when swapping motherboards. I don't want to spend
> hours loading XP and programs from scratch. Is there any way to
> keep XP happy?

There's a good chance that you can keep your existing
Windows XP installation by doing a repair installation
immediately after performing the upgrade. We are a dealer
and the following steps usually work for us.

Changing Motherboards With Windows 2000/XP
--------------------------------------------

XP/2000 has problems when changing motherboards.
What you have to do is: Boot from the XP CD, skip past the screen that asks
if you want to 'repair using recovery console.' The next screen or perhaps
the one following should ask whether you want to do a 'repair install' or a
'clean install.' Choose 'repair.' It may ask for the product 'key,' the 25
alpha-numeric characters you entered with your first install.




---
Kevin Chalker, Owner (KC COMPUTERS)
E-mail: (E-Mail Removed) Web: www.kc-computers.com
Internet dealer since 1991!!! See WWW.RESELLERRATINGS.COM!!!

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, _R
<_(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> I've heard that as part of MS's effort to keep XP secure that they
> try to detect extensive hardware changes. That obviously would
> happen when swapping motherboards. I don't want to spend
> hours loading XP and programs from scratch. Is there any way to
> keep XP happy?

With XP, there are two aspects to the migration - Activation
and Enumeration.

Activation is MS's effort to prevent piracy. You will find
various descriptions on the net, for how much of a hardware
change the OS will tolerate, before it requests that you
re-activate the installed OS.

Enumeration is the other aspect of migrating. Every piece of
hardware needs a driver, in order for the OS to use it.
The MS OSes are pretty "brittle" when it comes to discovering
that the hardware underneath has changed.

One thing I discovered (via Google search), was the importance
of the disk driver handoff at boot time. The BIOS INT13 routines,
are what is used to fetch the initial data from the disk. At
some point, Windows will try to use its own drivers to fetch
data. If the new Southbridge looks nothing like the old
Southbridge, or you moved your boot disk to a non-Southbridge
IDE controller (like a Promise chip), then it is highly unlikely
the boot disk will have a driver for the new hardware.

I managed to move a Win2K disk, by putting the disk back on
my old computer, changing the IDE driver on the Southbridge,
to the default MS driver for IDE. The default driver can
talk to a lot of vanilla (non-RAID) Southbridge ports, and
I actually managed to get it to boot, once that driver was
changed. Then, the OS was able to re-enumerate and find
enough drivers for the new board, to finish booting.

Since I don't own or use WinXP (I refuse to own an OS that
requires a phone call to get it to work), I cannot advise
as to whether WinXP will refuse to operate solely as a
result of detecting an activation issue. If it does
fail on you, it is more likely to be an issue with
enumeration or with the driver that supports the boot
disk.

You can also do yourself another favor, and while the disk
is connected to the old computer, uninstall the old video
driver(s), and other custom sound hardware drivers from the
old system. That just might eliminate any secret startup
items, or conflicts between old video/sound drivers and
the new ones. Uninstalling those drivers and cleaning out
any hardware related items from "Add/Remove", would be the
last step before shutting down and disconnecting the
drive from the old system.

Also, before executing any of the suggestions above, I
recommend imaging your old boot disk. I always buy a spare
hard drive that I keep for emergencies, and the spare can be
used to make an exact copy of your current drive. That
way, if you plug the drive into the new computer, and the
new computer destroys the drive due to some "infant
mortality" problem with the new hardware, all is not lost.
With the backup drive in hand, before doing any of the
above procedures, it will be a lot safer to change the
default driver to the MS driver, and uninstall any custom
hardware that will not be present on the new system.

Try a search on - "motherboard swap" activation
in Google, to find examples of the results of other
people trying the same thing.

http://groups.google.ca/groups?threa...5398%40shaw.ca

If the MS IDE driver trick doesn't work, the next thing to
try is Kevin's Repair Install suggestion, being careful
to get to the right screen to do the repair install. One
thing a repair install might not handle too well, is if your
old computer wasn't set up for ACPI. If the old install was
for a "Standard PC", you could potentially have all manner
of subtle problems. It is possible for the old disk to be
messed up bad enough, that only a clean install will give
satisfactory performance and glitch free operation. The
HAL issue (hardware abstraction layer) seems to be the
most deadly, in terms of needing to reinstall.

In terms of saving time, it also really helps to have the
old computer intact, in case you need to move the disk back
to the old computer, and mess with the drive. All you need
to achieve this, is a spare power supply, to power the new
motherboard while it sits on your table top. I like to
build a new system up on the table first, as it is a lot
easier to get at the hardware. If you get in a jam, you can
move that boot drive back to the old computer and fix it.
If you are trying to do this migration, using the
same computer case and components, you'll have to
be lucky... or good :-)

HTH,
Paul

> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, _R
> <_(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> Since I don't own or use WinXP (I refuse to own an OS that
> requires a phone call to get it to work)...

What's that all about? When I installed XP Pro on my new
system in January, there was no need for a phone call. Are you
referring to some out-of-date activation procedure?

"CapeGuy" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:0uS4e.61423$(E-Mail Removed)...
>> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, _R
>> <_(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>
>> Since I don't own or use WinXP (I refuse to own an OS that
>> requires a phone call to get it to work)...
>
> What's that all about? When I installed XP Pro on my new
> system in January, there was no need for a phone call. Are you
> referring to some out-of-date activation procedure?
You sytem will have registered via the web, if connected to the internet,
but the process is still required if the system is not web connected.

Best Wishes

No. Regardless of the Microsoft Activation process, WHENEVER you change the
motherboard in an XP OS computer, then you MUST reformat the harddrive and
do a fresh install of the OS. Otherwise you will get nasty Registry errors
and ongoing data corruption. The motherboard's chipset will have changed
and XP will NOT accurately recognize it.

--
DaveW



"_R" <_(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news(E-Mail Removed)...
> I've heard that as part of MS's effort to keep XP secure that they
> try to detect extensive hardware changes. That obviously would
> happen when swapping motherboards. I don't want to spend
> hours loading XP and programs from scratch. Is there any way to
> keep XP happy?
>

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 16:12:48 -0700, DaveW wrote:
>
> No. Regardless of the Microsoft Activation process, WHENEVER you change
> the motherboard in an XP OS computer, then you MUST reformat the
> harddrive and do a fresh install of the OS. Otherwise you will get
> nasty Registry errors and ongoing data corruption. The motherboard's
> chipset will have changed and XP will NOT accurately recognize it.

While I'm an advocate for a wipe/reinstall, your statement if false. Most
people can do a repair/reinstall and not lose anything, and it will work
perfectly going forward.


--
(E-Mail Removed)
remove 999 in order to email me

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 23:22:23 GMT, Leythos <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 16:12:48 -0700, DaveW wrote:
>>
>> No. Regardless of the Microsoft Activation process, WHENEVER you change
>> the motherboard in an XP OS computer, then you MUST reformat the
>> harddrive and do a fresh install of the OS. Otherwise you will get
>> nasty Registry errors and ongoing data corruption. The motherboard's
>> chipset will have changed and XP will NOT accurately recognize it.
>
>While I'm an advocate for a wipe/reinstall, your statement if false. Most
>people can do a repair/reinstall and not lose anything, and it will work
>perfectly going forward.

That's the goal. I'd love to reformat and install clean, but it
takes me two days to set up opsys partitions and configure all the
software, drivers, etc.

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 04:24:15 -0400, (E-Mail Removed) (Paul) wrote:

>In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, _R
><_(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>With XP, there are two aspects to the migration - Activation
>and Enumeration.
>
>Activation is MS's effort to prevent piracy. You will find
>various descriptions on the net, for how much of a hardware
>change the OS will tolerate, before it requests that you
>re-activate the installed OS.

Hi Paul, This is exactly what I was looking for. In fact, I
would have forgotten an important step if you hadn't jogged
my memory.

(continued)...

>One thing I discovered (via Google search), was the importance
>of the disk driver handoff at boot time. The BIOS INT13 routines,
>are what is used to fetch the initial data from the disk. At
>some point, Windows will try to use its own drivers to fetch
>data. If the new Southbridge looks nothing like the old
>Southbridge, or you moved your boot disk to a non-Southbridge
>IDE controller (like a Promise chip), then it is highly unlikely
>the boot disk will have a driver for the new hardware.

I'm moving from a P4TE w Rambus to P4C800-E with Northwood
and dual channel DDR. I was hoping that would not be enough
of an upset in itself. If so, I'll need to reinstall.

I am building the new system in a new case, with a new drive.
Everything will be incremental and parallel when possible. I
installed Gigabit Lan, identical video cards, and identical aux
ATA cards. The NIC may be a major one, so I've installed a
NIC card in the P4TE. The P4C800 has NIC hardware onboard,
but I'll move the old NIC card to the new system along with the
new drive for first boot. At least it will have a familiar MAC
address (that may be a major one).

I currently run the system (C, D) partitions from the mainboard
ATA controller, but now that you mention it, there may be some
problems. I was thinking that the ATA controllers would be
fairly generic and compatible, but you're right; that's probably
not a valid assumption.

I already run an aux ATA controller card, so maybe I'll switch
the boot to that card temporarily. Then mirror the boot partition
(on the old system), install an identical ATA card in the new system,
move the new drive over, and hope she boots from it.

I can switch the drive back to the motherboard ATA ctlr later
after the system has settled in.

>Since I don't own or use WinXP (I refuse to own an OS that
>requires a phone call to get it to work),

You're running Linux?

MS is apparently going to enforce SP2 for dial-in software
updates as of Apr 12. Anyone who is paranoid about SP2
(like me) may want to do an update before that.

It's often Microsoft's best customers that get bit with this stuff.
I've spoken to people who had no access to their keys for
[word/excell/whatever] when the software decided to ask
for them. Plane flights, business trips, etc.

Musicians (a world plagued by dongles) often buy the software,
then find a hacked version to bypass the silly dongle. Ironically
it's usually more reliable than the legit code *with* the dongle.
I had to turn on my HP printer every time I wanted to use Cubase.
The parallel port dongle would get confused if its external lines
were not powered up.

>You can also do yourself another favor, and while the disk
>is connected to the old computer, uninstall the old video
>driver(s), and other custom sound hardware drivers from the
>old system.

I have two identical video boards for that. I'll be keeping
the old system around, but swapping stuff incrementally
before the final move. I was going to leave the sound card
drivers and others intact and remove them after the new
system installs its own.

I'd love to know how MS gauges hardware changes. I
changed a NIC card without XP complaints. I just wonder
if there's a timeout involved, or if new stuff could be swapped
in 5 min intervals.

>Also, before executing any of the suggestions above, I
>recommend imaging your old boot disk. I always buy a spare
>hard drive that I keep for emergencies

Yep, I have a lot of spares at the moment. Acronis has a
migration utility. I was thinking about checking into that.
I doubt that it does much more than imaging, but I trust
that it won't write a drive signature that will screw up the
boot process.

,>Try a search on - "motherboard swap" activation
>in Google, to find examples of the results of other
>people trying the same thing.
>
>http://groups.google.ca/groups?threa...5398%40shaw.ca

Good thread. Sounds like there's a way out even if I
mess up the process.

>If the MS IDE driver trick doesn't work, the next thing to
>try is Kevin's Repair Install suggestion, being careful
>to get to the right screen to do the repair install.

Kevin? I missed that.

> One thing a repair install might not handle too well, is if your
>old computer wasn't set up for ACPI. If the old install was
>for a "Standard PC", you could potentially have all manner
>of subtle problems.

Make that *two* things I would have forgotten.

>HTH,

Certainly does. Thanks again, Paul!

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 03:55:46 GMT, "KC Computers" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:


>XP/2000 has problems when changing motherboards.
>What you have to do is: Boot from the XP CD, skip past the screen that asks
>if you want to 'repair using recovery console.' The next screen or perhaps
>the one following should ask whether you want to do a 'repair install' or a
>'clean install.' Choose 'repair.' It may ask for the product 'key,' the 25
>alpha-numeric characters you entered with your first install.
>
>Kevin Chalker, Owner (KC COMPUTERS)

Ah, *you're* Kevin. Thanks!

_R