_R said:
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/[email protected]
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