On 3/30/2007 6:29 PM On a whim, George Valkov pounded out on the keyboard
in message | On 3/30/2007 3:11 PM On a whim, TimR pounded out on the keyboard
|
| > I have an XP Pro system that was installed with a SATA drive and PCI
| > card...took me awhile to get the drive up and running since it was my
first
| > SATA drive.
| >
| > I have installed a new motherboard...which has SATA interface on board.
| >
| > Can I just connect the SATA cable to the new board..enable support in
the
| > bios...and remove the PCI card...or will XP Pro have a fit with this
| > procedure ?
| >
| > As an alternative...can I leave the PCI SATA card in...but just still
work
| > with the motherboard SATA connection ?
| >
| > Thanks, Tim
| >
| >
|
| Hi Tim,
|
| XP may freak out because of the new MB.
Terry, be default most of the computers have their system (boot) hard-disk
attached to controller on the main-board. So when you change the main-board,
you will have a different controller. Windows cannot use the old drivers for
it and therefor cannot access its hard-disk. That is why it will fail on a
blue screen.
On the other hand if the system (boot) disk is attached to a PCI card, then
windows will already dave proper drivers for the controller and will
probably be able to access its hard-disk. So it is possible to perform a
normal startup and detect the rest of the new hardware. After the restart
the computer should be ready to go.
At that moment TimR can move the system hard-disk to the controller on the
main-board (drivers for it are already installed). Now there are two
possibilities:
1. If the drive letter is preserved - you are ready to use the computer.
2. Well, sometimes windows is stupid enough to assign a different drive
letter for the startup partition. This may also happen if you
add/remove/change partitions from a non-windows operating system, however is
bug in windows itself. At that point windows will start, however when you
try to login, it will take about one or two minutes. Do not restart the
computer, but wait untill the logon fails and windows throws you out. Power
off the computer.
NOTE: If you can login from the network (administrative) you may be able to
use regedit to connect to that computer's registry and fix it, instead of
attaching the disk to another computer. Then simply restart and see if you
can logon. Else:
Here is where things get a bit complicated:
attach the hard-disk to a working windows installation to modify the
registry. There is quite a bit to be done to make the system back
functional:
start --> run: regedit
navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
file --> load hive: D:\WINDOWS\system32\config\system
(assumming D: is the dead system's partition)
call it SYS
navigate to SYS\MountedDevices
On the right there should be one or more items like (? is a drive letter)
\DosDevices\?:
so if for instance you have \DosDevices\D: and the startup partition
previously was C:, simply press F2 and rename D to C.
It is safe to make mistakes and modify the worng partition's drive letter.
Once you find which is the startup partition and correct its drive letter,
windows will allow you to logon and will work properly.
I have 3 hard-disks. I moved the system hard-disk from primary-slave on
main-board to a PCI card. Windows is now working just fine!
George Valkov
| I've had to perform a repair
| install on machines I've put new MB's in, so have your XP CD handy. It
| will add new drivers for the new board (you should also have a CD from
| the MB that includes drivers in case XP doesn't have them).
|
| As far as the MB SATA connection, I would use the onboard rather than
| the PCI (unless the PCI card has a faster transfer rate). You shouldn't
| have any problems booting from it, once you have the BIOS configured
| properly.
|
|
| --
| Terry
|
| ***Reply Note***
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George,
Of all the MB's I've replaced, I have never had an instance where the
hard disk could not be accessed. XP installs generic IDE drivers if the
exact driver isn't available, and then after the install it's up to the
user to install an optimized driver for the chipset.
What makes you think that Windows will have the "proper drivers" for a
PCI card? Chances are it won't and a generic driver will be installed,
again leaving it up to the user to install the correct optimized driver.
As far as your network notes are concerned; all the network settings
are retained on the hard drive, so once the proper MB drivers are
installed (NIC drivers also), everything else should function as normal.
There's no reason to perform any registry tweaks.
I have 3 hard disks also, along with 5 OS's (win98, WinMe, w2k, xp,
linux) and have a common data drive and a common program drive (both are
fat32). I'm using PATA & SATA w/o RAID and everything works fine!
And going back to my statement that caused you to respond, "XP may freak
out because of the new MB", is exactly what MIGHT happen. That is why a
repair install MAY be necessary.
--
Terry
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