New motherboard and XP

Just upgraded PC from XP3800/Asrock Dual Sata-II to 720X3/Biostar TA790GX.

Since people often raise questions on whether you can change mbs and not have to reinstall XP (and in particular OEM versions) here are my experiences. Firstly I was assuming it would work as I've done it before but I did more reading up which seems to have helped.

1) before starting I took precaution of backing up important stuff on PC to a NAS and also copied the XP partition on my HDD using a partitioning tool so that in event of problems I could restore the initial state.

2) before taking out old mboard I used SYSPREP from XP to "reseal" the installation. This, I think, strips the install back to the bare minimal drivers etc.

3) First step was to boot up mb with no HDD/CD connected to check out the BIOS - TA790GX came with an old BIOS that posted with the 720X3 but didn't recognize it ... using the BIOS based flash update I was able to update to current version via a USB stick.

4) Having got this sorted out plugged the HDD/CD in and booted up ... XP started and due to resealing went into a mini-install mode and basically worked. Only minor panic was when it said my windows id code wasn't valid ... but on checking I'd mistyped one digit. During mini-install and/or initial boot after its restart it asked for some drivers and I pointed it to the CD that came with the mb.

5) XP now worked but said it needed to be authenticate ... once I'd got the LAN drivers installed and network connection running clicked on the relevant icon and it went off and re-authenticated itself.

So it all went extremely smoothly and no issues.

Oo, sysprep, sounds useful. So all your applications etc copied across without need to re-install ?

ecat said:

Oo, sysprep, sounds useful. So all your applications etc copied across without need to re-install ?

Click to expand...

All applications are there ... its the same HDD so nothing is being copied. What Sysprep seems to do is to roll back the driver support to the basic set that the XP install starts with so that when it next reboots it repeats the install steps where it recognised the hardware and loads the relevant drivers ... for most of this the drivers are already on the HDD and for the ones from the new MB they are on its CD.

After this completes everything appears to be as it was .... only issues are with apps that recognised the hardware for authentication purposes (for me this seemed to be XP, Office and steam - XP and Office needed a quick internet exchange to re-authenticate and steam just needed my password).

Note: I gather that this isn't really what SYSPREP is designed for .... its intended for people like IT departments to make a standard XP install that can be rolled out across PCs with each PC able to customize to its hardware.

Previous time I changed mb's I took the approach of deleting all the MB drivers via control panel/system/hardware devices then let next XP reboot find the new ones ... sort of the same process but didn't go as cleanly and, I think, ended up with XP deciding it definitely needed re-autheticating before I'd got the network working so that time I had to do it via phone and exchange 40-digit codes with an automated response system.

After my recent upgrade this is just what I'm looking for and definitely worth a try. Any idea if it prompts for raid controller driver disks ?

ecat said:

After my recent upgrade this is just what I'm looking for and definitely worth a try. Any idea if it prompts for raid controller driver disks ?

Click to expand...

No idea - I'm not using RAID. I suspect that this could be a problem as the boot on the new MB needs to know that its RAIDed ... but at that stage you don't have the correct RAID drivers. So may not be so simple in this case

Oh well. I'll report back on this when I give it a try. Thanks for the info

O_O look what I've found

You can also load 3rd party mass storage drivers if using anything later than the Windows 2000 SysPrep Update 1.1 version. You would need to download those drivers and place them in a drivers folder. Then in the [SysPrepMassStorage] section you would need to specify the plug and play (PnP) path ID of the controller and the path to the driver. You will typically want to first generate the list as shown above and then merge them with a list like the one below.

Click to expand...

http://www.vernalex.com/guides/sysprep/mass.shtml

Main page at: http://www.vernalex.com/guides/sysprep/

I wanted to transfer my complete OS install from on board RAID0 on my old DFi nF4 chipset 939 board to on board RAID0 on my new Asus M3A79-T Deluxe AM2+ board, so I gave sysprep a try.

It Works

I'd have to run through the procedure a couple more times to streamline the method but basically:

1) Clone source OS partition to an IDE drive and make bootable. IDE is nice and simple and doesn't require a special driver.

2) Disconnect source drives and boot IDE drive.

3) Sysprep the IDE drive, I ticked 'Mini Setup', 'Detect non-plug and play hardware', 'Don’t regenerate security identifiers' and hit the Reseal button.

4) Boot IDE drive on new mb. A PS2 keyboard my be useful to get through the 'Press Next to detect Keyboard' sequence . Follow the prompts.

5) With luck Windows now boots. Time to tidy up any old drivers,you could do this between step 2 & 3, and install new ones, including any RAID drivers.

6) If all is well then clone the IDE OS partition onto the RAID array.

7) Reboot and smile as your system comes alive on the new hardware.

At this point you may not be smiling and your first RAID boot may be stuck at the point just before the Login screen or desktop appears. I also had this happen once at 2) above.

The trick here is to match the 'Volume ID' of the RAID array to that of the IDE drive. Volume ID, eg F774-A73C, is not the same as Volume name, I used XXClone to make the change. So, to be shure:
During 1) make the IDE Volume ID equal to source raid Volume ID.
During 6) make the destination raid Volume ID equal to the IDE Volume ID

From the XXClone documentation:

Some installed applications use the Volume ID (a 32-bit value) as a key to verify the proper installation of the software, supposedly for piracy prevention.
For example, some Anti-Virus products are known to be sensitive to the Volume ID value of the system volume and display a warning message suggesting a re-installation.

In such a case, copying the Volume ID from the Source volume to the Target often alleviate the problem.

This feature allows you to duplicate the Volume ID for such a purpose.

Actually, our stance on such prolems is that all problematic applications be re-installed on the cloned environment (e.g., using the original install CD).
The user-generated data that are associated with the application should be preserved through the re-installation.

However, each application behaves diffferently. Therefore, you should not discard any data on the Source volume until the behaviors of all applications have been fully tested in the the Target Volume environment.

Fortunately, applications that cause such a problem seem to be in a small minority.

Click to expand...

http://www.xxclone.com/

It works for me. It is not a magic bullet, some work is required to sort out drivers, more work to sort out some 'sensitive' apps, I have no idea what it will do to your iTunes or other DRM laden material. A small price to pay in order to avoid re-installing the 100's of apps, games and little utilities I've collected.

ecat said:

I wanted to transfer my complete OS install from on board RAID0 on my old DFi nF4 chipset 939 board to on board RAID0 on my new Asus M3A79-T Deluxe AM2+ board, so I gave sysprep a try.

It Works

Click to expand...

Great news ... I assumed that "unRAIDing", sysprep-ing, changing to new MB and doing mini-install then "reRAIDing" would probably work