Transfering old HD to new K8V MB ???

[Bob Petruska]

I would like to know if anyone was ever successful transferring a Window XP
based hard drive with all applications to an K8V? I realize that
transferring a HD under Windows 9x was a piece of cake, but read Google to
death that the chances of the the blue screen of death on first boot with
new K8V board is most probable.


It's almost impossible to start with a clean drive due to numerous apps
tweaks, patches, etc over the years. I'm going from and AMD 1.4G on an Asus
A7V to AMD 64, 3000+ and K8V.


Any suggestions?

 

[Tim]

Bob,

Do a full disk backup before starting, preferrably with disc imaging
software such as DriveImage or Nortons Ghost - in fact if your current HDD
is old (and a bit slow) consider a SATA drive with more modern performance
and ghosting the imaging to the new HDD. Note: You will have to remove the
Windows installation off the original HDD or you will be in breach of
copyright.

You need to do a Repair install:

http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/repaxp.htm

In addition, if you are using any disk controller such as RAID (SATA RAID,
IDE RAID, any SCSI) you will need to supply the correct driver during the
repair in response to the F6 invitation - keep an eye out for it during
early parts of the install. Press F6 early and often. Leave the driver disc
in the drive as it is accessed twice. Check the mobo manual for details &
double check where you have things plugged in - a common source of problems:
installing drivers for one controller when the disc is on another.

Do *not* bung the HDD in the new computer and attempt to start it at all -
the first time the computer boots off the HDD must be after the repair
otherwise you will have to re-run the repair and may strike problems.

Double check you do not have any of these new fangle USB Disk drives, smart
media devices ( there are about 6 device types ) plugged in or turned on
during the install. Remove the interface cable from both ends and the power
connector from the device if you do - Windows XP loves to get drive letters
wrong. I recommend that the only disk drive you have installed during the
repair is the HDD to be repaired, the Floppy to supply drivers if needed and
the CD / DVD drive for your Windows CD. Install and configure all other
peripherals *after* the repair has succeeded and you have are happy with
stability - keep extra devices turned off in the BIOS until you are ready to
install the drivers.

Note what it says in the above article re: critical updates, fixes, and
service packs. Make sure you reinstall all of them. XP SP2 may be out any
day...

Before getting started, check BIOS version and Driver versions and check
system stability with memtest86 from memtest86.com. Consider running a
torture test using Prime95 once windows is back up and running.

If you follow along with this you should have success quite easily. It is
not half as difficult as it may sound...

HTH
- Tim

 

[Juergen Kluth]

Hi;
its my job too this week ! I decided to :

-have a look in the BIOS to notivy some settings
-ACPI : to set up new mobo to same status
(w2K , wxp) want the same settings for "hal"

-ensure that pagefile is on bootdrive (i've got more hdd's)
-have all nessesary drivers for current (using again actual) and future (hw
on new mobo) hardware available.
-either on hdd or cdrom or disk / else

-read manual and create driver disk for sata controllers on k8v (if
nessesary for you)

-have a bootdisk or any method to update BIOS on new mobo (may come with
overhauled) have a look if there is any new BIOS out

-create an image (to eventually restore your hardwaresituation with old
mobo)
-have a rescue medium to restore that

- have at least a your personell data / files saved anywhere

-uninstall mobo specific software
:monitoring tools , raidtools , sound , graphic....

uninstall actual drivers
-graphic - card driver and software (for further removing chipset specific
agp driver)
-unistall mobo - chipset - driver

migrate mobo now
-set up new BIOS settings
-try to boot
:have in mind to boot in "secure mode F8" -i'm german-

-install drivers ....

in my dreams : that's it

regards jk

 

[Juergen Kluth]

Important :

have yourself informed about youre cpu stepping an figure out the voltage
1.5 or 1.55 V

check out on first time invoking bios that there is no wrong voltage setting
at all (not only on cpu voltage)

- i had it one time after replacing a powersupply, and one time aftere
updating a bios, that the voltage settings where that wrong and some
componets run hot

regards jk

 

[_P_e_ar_lALegend]

It's almost impossible to start with a clean drive due to numerous apps

tweaks, patches, etc over the years. I'm going from and AMD 1.4G on an Asus
A7V to AMD 64, 3000+ and K8V.

Any suggestions?

When I do change a motherboard with different chipset I always do like
this: I have a spare SATA Controller, I connected it to the old system, I
let XP loading the drivers. When it's correctly installed I do swap drives
from original controller on the motherboard to it. Another boot and I'm
sure everything is fine. Shutdown

Then I swap motherboards and everytning then I put the spare card with the
HD connected to the new system. Guaranteed it boot fine. THen XP setup the
new hardware and I still have the drives installed to the spare controller.

When the new system is ready and new motherboard sata drivers are fine and
working, I do swap HD from the spare controller to the motherboard SATA
connector. I reboot, I assure myself everything is fine, then I shutdown
the system, I remove the spare controller card and I done

Did it lotsa time, always fine upgrade.

 

[DaveW]

If you change the motherboard on an XP based computer you MUST reformat the
harddrive and do a fresh install of the OS, or you will experience ongoing
nasty Registry errors.

 

[Tim]

Dave,

Its about time you tried a repair insall yourself and overcame your fear of
them.

To re-iterate: a fresh install is always desirable, but often it is not
practial. If you re-read the OP's posting he says "It is almost impossible
to start with a clean drive" .

To the OP: I suggest you practice a little minimalism: install only the
applications you need, know how to install them, know how to patch them,
know how to configure them, document the process - perhaps do it one
application at a time and overcome your current situation as if you lose a
disc drive any time now you will be in the POO!

- Tim

 

[Bob Petruska]

Tim you are correct in quoting me on that , but now I'm changing my comment
to it's impossible to start from scratch.

I cloned my current hard drive last night and that will be the drive for my
mb changeover testing. I also placed another clean drive in my current
system, installed WinXP and then started to load applications. I was into
to this for about an hour when I realized that it is impossible to find all
the patches, tweaks, configurations, log-on cookies, serial numbers, plus
save my favorites, address books, newgroups, re-register all my listservers,
hyperlinks, what applications and disks did I obtain all those fonts from
that I use in my pubs, my zillion data files peppered in old applications,
plus the old apps that were download install only, etc, etc.

I will definitely junk my K8V, Athalon 64 and keep my lowly A7V is I can't
make the old drive change. I currently have a flawlessly running system
that doesn't hangs or crash and it still has roots back to DOS 3.1on the
hard drive as I continually updated over the years. I just want some speed
for faster DVD authoring.

 

[Dick]

Do the repair install. It really is painless. I've gone from a VIA
chipset AMD motherboard to a SIS chipset P4 motherboard to a VIA chipset
P4 motherboard and now to an Intel chipset P4 motherboard all with the
same hard drive. Each time I did a repair install and never had a scary
moment.

Dick

 

[Paul]

Tim you are correct in quoting me on that , but now I'm changing my comment
to it's impossible to start from scratch.

I cloned my current hard drive last night and that will be the drive for my
mb changeover testing. I also placed another clean drive in my current
system, installed WinXP and then started to load applications. I was into
to this for about an hour when I realized that it is impossible to find all
the patches, tweaks, configurations, log-on cookies, serial numbers, plus
save my favorites, address books, newgroups, re-register all my listservers,
hyperlinks, what applications and disks did I obtain all those fonts from
that I use in my pubs, my zillion data files peppered in old applications,
plus the old apps that were download install only, etc, etc.

I will definitely junk my K8V, Athalon 64 and keep my lowly A7V is I can't
make the old drive change. I currently have a flawlessly running system
that doesn't hangs or crash and it still has roots back to DOS 3.1on the
hard drive as I continually updated over the years. I just want some speed
for faster DVD authoring.

I just completed a transition to a P4C800-E Deluxe. The one piece of
advice that I found useful, was to make sure the Microsoft Standard IDE
driver was installed while the disk was sitting in the old system. (This
advice is for a PATA drive, but depending on whether the Southbridge on
your board has remapping of SATA to the old I/O address and IRQ used
by PATA, the move between systems could work if using a SATA drive
transferred from operating on one Southbridge to another Southbridge.)
On my old board, there was an Intel IDE driver sitting there, and I did
a driver update, and was offered two alternatives, the Intel one and a
Microsoft one. I took the standard Microsoft one.

Like yourself, I used the clone method. First I tried booting with the
clone, but got a blue screen and an "Inaccessable boot device". After
returning the clone to the old system, changing the IDE driver to the
Microsoft one, I was able to get the disk to boot on the new system.
While I was using Win2K and not WinXP like yourself, I think it is
still worth a shot.

I tested my system before installing it in a case, and it is a lot
easier to experiment with issues like this, if everything is just
lying on a table. After I made reasonable progress booting, installing
new video card drivers, playing a couple of games, then I moved to
the installation phase. Doing that eliminates wasted effort stuffing
all the goods into a case right away, only to find problems.

The only problems I had with the install, were caused by the way that
I did the original install on the old system. On my old system, Asus
shipped several versions of BIOS with busted ACPI support, so I was
forced to install with a standard PC HAL. That has dogged me to this
day. I'm not sure you can go from Standard PC HAL to ACPI HAL without
reinstalling. If your original install was in good shape, and has the
right HAL to support your new hardware, I think you stand a good chance
of making the transition. (One difference is, with WinXP, you might
need to re-activate, whereas with Win2K, I didn't have to worry about
that. That is the only reason I bought Win2K when I did.)

HTH,
Paul

 

[Tim]

Paul,

The issues you describe are characteristic of not doing a repair when one is
needed.

Bob,

Don't give up.

Take the cloned drive, bung it in the new machine, but don't boot off it.
Check your bios is set to boot off CD insert the XP setup CD and boot from
that.

Follow the instructions re: repair.

If you have any doubt about which drivers if any to install during repair,
feed any drivers in via F6 - thats what it is for. If the repair does not
need the drivers it will eventually ignore them and nothing untoward will
happen. (During install it inspects hardware and part of the plug and play
process is marrying up the devices with the drivers - if you supply an extra
driver or 200 it does not matter).

The repair re-runs the plug and play setup for the XP system & rebuilds the
registry settings for hardware. It also replaces all XP system files with
those off CD so if you have an nasty virus this is one possible way to get
rid of it (or disc corruptions, lost files, damage in general). Many virus
are too smart for this unfortunately.

Because the issue files off the XP CD are reinstalled, any service packs
that were present will revert to the level of the CD (IE some CD's have SP1
on already so the repair ends up with SP1). You will need to reapply service
packs (OK so there is only 1 at the moment, but SP2 is due soon) all
critical and other updates from Windows Update. Also since all hardware is
freshly discovered you will have to install motherboard and other drivers as
though this were a new system - check device manager.

The easiest way to get your system up to date is to use Windows Update but
this has the danger that while you are installing critical patches your
system is not protected against the exploits of the very things being fixed,
so if possible download the critical updates to a CD separately or prio to
this - try and use a hardware firewall if you have one.

Bob, there is something called the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard
(Start, Run, migwiz.exe). This program will package up many of the items you
mentioned above for movement to a new computer: favourites, email, settings,
My Documents etc, preferences, bags of stuff, but not application patches or
data. If you use disc cloning s/w and a Repair install then this is not
needed.

I always maintain a downloads folder that I archive to CD that contains
shareware / software I have downloaded and or purchased from the net. I keep
it arranged so that I can re-install each app quickly - I also include
things like license keys in .txt files where needed and many other things
with the install programs so that they are complete.

If you image the drive to the new machine then Follow these instructions and
if you have any troubles at all feel free to post back - you have a nice
simple regression step of simply not proceeding, so really there is from
what you say no risk at all. On the license issue, you have 90 days to
activate anyway so don't fret about running 2 XP's for a short while....

- Tim

 

[_P_e_ar_lALegend]

Il Tue, 29 Jun 2004 23:16:33 +0000, DaveW ha scritto:

If you change the motherboard on an XP based computer you MUST reformat the
harddrive and do a fresh install of the OS, or you will experience ongoing
nasty Registry errors.

Bullshit!!! I never ever reinstalled way back from 1996, I upgraded step
by step to XP via Win2000 and I changed maybe 50 motherboards and all the
components without NEVER HAD A SINGLE PROBLEM!

 

[Patrick Dunford]

I would like to know if anyone was ever successful transferring a Window XP
based hard drive with all applications to an K8V? I realize that
transferring a HD under Windows 9x was a piece of cake, but read Google to
death that the chances of the the blue screen of death on first boot with
new K8V board is most probable.

You must boot the XPCD and run a Repair installation.

Because of Hardware APplication Layers it is not possible to expect XP to
start up just as before when you replace a motherboard.

 

[Bob Petruska]

Well I just spent 40 hours since Friday making the switch.

1. I back up 2 clone HDs to run the test. Took 4 hrs to clone each 120 G
drive.

2. Tested new system without HD attached. Booted with Win98 boot disk.
Detected CDROMs(2) on IDE bus OK. Checked out RAM with Memtest86....not one
error after running tests a few times.

3. Placed Clone #1 HD in new system. Placed WinXP in CDROM drive to boot
off of. Booted up, ran repair( yes, the second one offered). Looked like
everything went OK. Rebooted.....blue screen of death(BSD) on first boot.
Was in constant reboot loop after that.

4. Placed Clone # 2 HD in new system. Just let it boot(no repair boot).
It found all drivers, HDs, CDROMs, etc. but kept getting a new HDC hardware
found and then a error stating trying to load driver but was incompatible
with platform. NOTE: all HDs, CDROMs, Floppy worked flawlessly. Rebooted
and ran repair again, HDC install error appeared again, but everything
worked ok. Rebooted and then the very quick blue screen of death with a
constant reboot loop.

Now at this point I had 2 trashed clone HDs with the BSD that were in a
reboot loop and couldn't be used any futher. Recloned the HDs for another 8
hours.

5. Put Clone #1 back into old MB (Asus A7v), booted as normal on Promise
ATA100 port. Shutdown, changed HD to the standard IDE port on aold MB,
rebooted and WinXP found drive and installed standard IDE driver. Went to
device manager and uninstalled everything possible (on items that need to
reboot to uninstall I just clicked OK but did not reboot). I shut down,
moved drive to new MB.

6. System booted, installed drivers correctly, all drives worked, loaded
VIA 4in1 from Asus MB disk. Still had that HDC driver install error
constantly popping up. Shutdown!

7. Pulled the CDROM cables, rebooted.....BINGO! The HDC error disappeared!
Shurtdown, reinstalled CDROM cables, rebooted everyhting worked flawlessly.
I didn't lose anything, no drivers, no hardware changes, video same, all
settings stayed instact. Nothing needed to be reinstalled except reactivate
WindowsXP and Office XP which was painless. It was just like I popped in a
new CPU and more RAM into the old MB.

NOTE: I did not run the WinXP repair on this last attemp. Amazing as the
old and new MBs have different chipsets, but they're both ASUS so maybe
that's why I like ASUS!

I then did the same install with my worth their weight in gold 2 GOLDEN
original HDs and the same results....Flawless install!!!

Thanks to all above for their help and suggestions. My suggestion on this
transfer is to clone a HD, boot on standard IDE port of old MB, remove
everything possbile in device manager, shutdown and just pop the HD into
the new MB and boot. Chances of success is high!