Upgrade to P4P800 Delux

[Will]

Right now I'm running a K7V with an 800 MHZ Athlon, but just ordered a
P4P800 Deluxe with a 3 GHZ Pentium 4 to get a little more speed for
Photoshop.

I'm running Win XP Pro on the K7V and wondering if I really need to do a
low level format of the drive and install everything new when I put the
P4P800 in, or if I can just switch mobos and let Windows get used to it.

Anybody?

Will

 

[Ken Fox]

Right now I'm running a K7V with an 800 MHZ Athlon, but just ordered a
P4P800 Deluxe with a 3 GHZ Pentium 4 to get a little more speed for
Photoshop.

I'm running Win XP Pro on the K7V and wondering if I really need to do a
low level format of the drive and install everything new when I put the
P4P800 in, or if I can just switch mobos and let Windows get used to it.

Anybody?

Will

I can see several obvious problems. For one thing, swapping in a drive into
a new system with a new mobo is dicey at best and probably not advisable.
I'd suggest a fresh install on those grounds alone.

Your second potential problem is product activation, which XP (pro and home)
have. It is very likely that even if the system would boot and adjust to
its new mobo, that you would be required to call MSFT for product
reactivation since the product has previously been activated on a very
different system. Although this is not a reason not to transfer over an
install to another system, I think that you should not go through this
aggravation more times than necessary. You might not know how stable this
transferred system is going to be until you use it for a few days. If you
have already called MSFT for product "reactivation" and then it turns out
that a fresh install is really what is needed due to instability, then you
might have to call MSFT twice in short order and might well get greeted with
skepticism the second time around.

ken

 

[Bronney Hui]

Agreed.

Done that 2 years ago while going from p2-400 on p2b-d -> p3-866 on cusl2-c.
Had to do a low level format. It seems that win xp doesn't get used to the
new "system devices" associated with the new mobo eventhough I kept all
components the same.

Time to backup those PSD's and let the 3Ghz rip some llama's ass.


-bron

 

[Tim]

All you need to do is a repair install.

However, it is always desireable to do an fdisk / full install if you have
time.

- Tim

 

[Will]

Ok, thanks for the feedback, Fdisk and reinstall it is.

Fortunately, I just recently upgraded to Win XP Pro to be able to run
PhotoshopCS and did a clean install on a new drive for that, so there
hasn't been much time to accumulate lots of junk on the disk and backing
up what there is won't be much of a problem. I even have the notes I
made for that install.

Now, is there anything I should know about setting up the P4P800,
flashing a current BIOS, etc.?


Will

 

[FredP]

Will, ... no need for Fdisk ... the XP Setup provides everything you
need, eg Format, Delete partitions, etc. See the following for a very
complete description on XP clean installs.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

I, personally, would just do a 'Repair' (the above site explains the
pros and cons), but it's just a matter of choice.

 

[Centella Cajon]

Right now I'm running a K7V with an 800 MHZ Athlon, but just ordered a
P4P800 Deluxe with a 3 GHZ Pentium 4 to get a little more speed for
Photoshop.

One related thing. When you get your system built be sure and check
the BIOS version. The P4P 800 Deluxe I just bought for a build about a
month ago came with BIOS version 1010. I had to flash the BIOS to the
newest (1015 when I did it) to get hyper-threading fully enabled. BTW,
I love this new system. Rock solid and fast. Good luck on your
upgrade.



Often wrong, but never in doubt.