Do You Need To Reformat Your Hdd When Instaling A

[clocker]

That's good to know.
Thanks.

[lynx]

You will almost certainly have to start up in safe mode. The drivers for the amd chipset will conflict with your new hardware and will have to be removed. For the IDE drivers you can only do this in safe mode. After the next reboot your system should correctly identify the new hardware.

I assume your current chipset is fully ACPI compliant. If not, the system will not boot when you change over to the new chipset in which case a re-installation of windows will be necessary. However, if you simply remove a few files (I can't remember which ones off hand but I can find out if necessary) the installation will proceed as if it were an upgrade and will retain all your existing software.

[kurtsl0an]

Originally posted by lynx@19 November 2003 - 04:06
If not, the system will not boot when you change over to the new chipset in which case a re-installation of windows will be necessary.

y won't the system boot? u've expereinced this problem with XP? XP should load default chipset drivers if they are unknown....

[lynx]

It will probably be ok because I'm not sure if you can run XP on a non-ACPI compliant system anyway.

But for some reason there is a different set of boot drivers for ACPI compliant systems compared to non-ACPI systems (on NT & 2K) so you can't get a system configured for one type to run on the other. I don't know the exact reasons why, you would have to ask Microsoft.

[kurtsl0an]

Originally posted by lynx@19 November 2003 - 04:14
you would have to ask Microsoft.

all for the low low price of only $245 dollars - no thanks -

[3RA1N1AC]

i'm glad that a couple of people supported my advice. if you've invested a lot of time & energy installing and configuring your programs, a reformat can be a huge pain in the ass, so you may as well deal with the problem directly instead of wiping the hard drive at the first sign of trouble.

yes, in some cases a newly formatted system might perform better than an old installation, but due to inexperience or simply bad luck (with things like hardware incompatibilities or bad drivers) you can have plenty of problems with a newly reformatted system too. with the proper maintenance/troubleshooting though, an old Windows installation can perform just as well as a new one.

[leonidas]

I think I follow your advice 3RA1N1AC. Thanks