XP Is So Flexible

AWPC · 28 Jul 2007 at 19:45

Just upgrade both my mobo & CPU to an QX6850 + Asus P35. Did not bother re-installing XP as I have a lot of games installed so tried just connecting the HD to the new mobo and it worked 1st went in on safe mode rebooted it picked up all the drivers rebooted again and now works perfectly so no need to reinstall anything. Amazing.

Vista however would not play ball so had to reinstall that from scratch and it is still slow even on an QX6850..........

Datamonkey · 28 Jul 2007 at 19:48

Always a good idea to re-install when changing hardware mate.

Your registry will be full of junk from your old drivers and such which will slow down xp.

Nice clean install and your new toys will truly fly

TheVoice · 28 Jul 2007 at 19:50

I tried doing that once. Windows worked, but startup was disgustingly slow, and it didn't seem as stable.

AWPC · 28 Jul 2007 at 19:54

I have 150GB of games installed though it takes ages to reinstall them all!!

STEAM alone is like 20-25GB, then another 30GB of Ubisoft Tom Clancy games, 17GB of Tomb Raider etc etc.

mrk · 28 Jul 2007 at 20:29

I highly doubt you play all those games ?

stickroad · 28 Jul 2007 at 20:42

Is it me or is this thread kinda like XP is sooooo good, Vista on the other hand is a load of ****?

TheVoice · 28 Jul 2007 at 21:29

AWPC said:
I have 150GB of games installed though it takes ages to reinstall them all!!

STEAM alone is like 20-25GB, then another 30GB of Ubisoft Tom Clancy games, 17GB of Tomb Raider etc etc.

That's why you should install your games to a different partition.

AWPC · 28 Jul 2007 at 23:43

TheVoice said:
That's why you should install your games to a different partition.

They already are installed on a different partition (the vista one) but the time alone to re-install is approx a day because of the slow nature of DVD based installs. Even though I do not play them all at once still like them to be installed in case I want to revisit with newer hardware.

Cuchulain · 28 Jul 2007 at 23:45

TheVoice said:
That's why you should install your games to a different partition.

How will that help with the games registry settings? :confused:

Clarkey · 28 Jul 2007 at 23:59

it wont, its about as silly a suggestion as running a windows install on totally new hardware and expecting it to be allright.

J.B · 29 Jul 2007 at 00:22

Last time I did this I went through the registry to get all the old drivers off. XP works pretty well, not the funiest job in the world and is probably not 100% accurate.

Tute · 29 Jul 2007 at 04:21

Had the same thing with Vista Home Premium. Went from an F-I90HD (different chipset).

So I uninstalled all ATi drivers from my system to be sure, did drivercleaner, then shutdown, connected the new motherboard up, booted up, installed ATi display drivers, and Intel chipset drivers, and all is well.

No issues whatsoever.

Try doing that pre-Windows 2000, lol.

stoofa · 29 Jul 2007 at 11:41

No reason at all why Vista cannot cope with such a swap out.
The only problem you'll have with hardware upgrades is when you are swapping to something that the OS doesn't know about and needs to know about to boot.
If an OS doesn't know anything about a particular chipset that gives it access to the HD controllers you are using then of course it's going to have problems.

Windows will only load and use the drivers it needs - so you can expect the first few reboots after a major upgrade or change to be slow as old and new drivers are swapped in and out.
After that all should be fine - gone are the days when an OS reinstall was required after every hardware change.
But hay - gone are the days when the OS needs reinstalling every few months yet there are people around who still do it.

bledd · 29 Jul 2007 at 12:16

with most games, you can just copy them across to a backup drive, then copy them back and export the reg files first from HKLM and HKCU in the Software section for each game

TheVoice · 30 Jul 2007 at 01:11

Clarkey said:
it wont, its about as silly a suggestion as running a windows install on totally new hardware and expecting it to be allright.

It isn't, actually. I speak from experience when I say that very few games ever need to re-installed - running the .exe is usually enough, because most games aren't reliant on the registry. The few that do need re-installing will do so very, very quickly if the files are already on the hard-drive anyway.

azteched · 30 Jul 2007 at 01:16

I just copied Steam & WoW across from my old pc when I installed by new one this week. Both work fine, and I didn't bother exporting reg settings.

Nikumba · 30 Jul 2007 at 18:46

To be honest a lot of games now will run after a format. With Steam you just install the client to your steam folder, run it, it auths job done.

WoW will run happily and the patching finds it. The BF games you just run the CD entry tool on the CD and they work fine.

Even SupCom and CoH works after a format

Kimbie

Thorne · 30 Jul 2007 at 20:43

I just did the same when upgrading to a QX6850 on a gigabyte P35 but I encountered a few problems , boot up was slower and I would get occasional hangs and error messages and the blue screen. I since did a clean build and its been working without any further problems. I also found that for some reason my 3DMark06 Benchmark increased.