Upgrade advice needed

[Marcus Smaby]

I have a server that needs upgrading. It is currently running on Win2k
Server SP4 and is SCSI based with 3 drives. It is currently a PII 450 mhz. I
have a spare PIII 850mhz box with 512mb ram. What I am hoping to do is to
remove the drives and SCSI controller from the old box and put them in the
new box and boot.

Am I daydreaming?

I know that a clean reinstall is the way to go, but this box has some
proprietary software that we need to keep and the developer is nowhere to be
found. If it doesn't boot after the transplant, should I run a repair or
another process?

TIA

Marcus

 

[Wolf Kirchmeir]

I have a server that needs upgrading. It is currently running on Win2k
Server SP4 and is SCSI based with 3 drives. It is currently a PII 450 mhz. I
have a spare PIII 850mhz box with 512mb ram. What I am hoping to do is to
remove the drives and SCSI controller from the old box and put them in the
new box and boot.

Am I daydreaming?

Yes. W2K/XP don't allow such a simple transfer of software to new
hardware. These OSs make a list of the hardware they're running on, and
get very upset if asked to run on alien ware. IMO this is an unnecessary
and very objectionable design feature, but what do I know? I'm just an
ordinary user. :-(

I know that a clean reinstall is the way to go,

Go to support.microsoft.com and Search for Moving Windows 2000 to New
Hardware. This and related articles will tell you what to do.

but this box has some

proprietary software that we need to keep and the developer is nowhere to be
found. If it doesn't boot after the transplant, should I run a repair or
another process?

If you can backup the prop. software to a CD, that _might_ save you some
troubles if you have to reinstall W2K. Problem is that most software
places some DLLs etc in the WINNT folder during installation. You have
to have those for a proper install, of course. So you may have to search
for and find those DLLs, a process I am not well versed in at all.
Regedit or RegCleaner should help you find these items, as they will be
registered under the software's name. There may be a utility that will
find and list all the bits and pieces of an app. If you find one, let us
know about it -- no reason why thousands should make the same search

Good luck!