Major Rebuild

[catmandu]

Four years ago I did my first DIY computer. Served us well until this weekend. Using t/s flowcharts I found online, seems it is either the mobo or CPU, and I don't have spares to isolate, plus they are old and slow.

So, rather than my usual reasoned, well thought out planning, I just said "let's go to Newegg with $200" and ended up with these new items:

BIOSTAR TFORCE TA790GX 128M AM2+/AM2 AMD 790GX HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor - Retail

Patriot Viper 4GB ( 2 x 2GB ) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM


$220 bucks delivered, after rebates, but I splurged on the HDD, since media files are starting to eat up space. I believe this will work fine for us, as this is the teen's compurter, doing mostly online media and communication, with a little home media thrown in (connects to a 720p screen, where we watch downloaded shows, etc.) I will re-use the Antec Sonata case w/ 380W p/s, the Samsung DVD RW, wireless keyboard and mouse.

I also have two Western Digital 40G SATA hd's, the most important being the former boot drive. I would love to just plug the old boot drive in and go, but I assume there will be all sorts of driver issues. So do I just start a new Windows XP install and migrate stuff from the old drives?

Any obvious gotcha's or hints on making this less troublesome?

Thanks,

Mike

 

[RJM62]

www.kitchentablecomputers.com

 

[pgengler]

If the old PC is still bootable, I think (I haven't done it myself) that you can go into Device Manager and remove the drivers for stuff on the motherboard/chipset so that Windows will use generic drivers on the next bootup, which would take place after you've swapped hardware. Windows would then go ahead and install the specific drives for the new mobo. You would probably have to reactive Windows, since I think it requires reactivation whenever a certain amount of hardware is replaced.

If the machine isn't bootable at present, the best bet is to do a new install on the new drive, leaving the old drives unattached for now. Once that's done, then plug in the old drives and start copying files off. (This way you don't have to worry about accidentally reformatting or otherwise erasing anything on them.)

Also: a 500GB is a splurge? I recently picked up three 1.5TB drives for my media center PC, though two of them are backup drives for the one 'live' drive. I got these after I filled up the 500GB drive I had in there and still had a lot more stuff to put on it.

 

[catmandu]

If the machine isn't bootable at present, the best bet is to do a new install . . . . Also: a 500GB is a splurge?

Yeah, no boot at all (no bios screen, no beeps, nuthin'). Looks like a migration is in order.

And I am jumping from 80gb to 500, so a splurge for me. Most of our digital stuff is done via the DishNetwork DVR, plus I also have an external 500GB drive that stores most of the media for now. Someday I have visions of a dedicated Media Server sending stuff all over the house, but then I also have visions of owning a plane, and a house in Costa Rica, and college for the kids, and . . .

 

[RJM62]

You can always use the same hard drive and do a repair install. Not a perfect solution, but it'll work. Clean the registry afterwards.

You'll probably have to reactivate Windows, as well.

 

[catmandu]

Windows wonders never cease: Slapping it all together and letting it boot actually worked, no repair install needed!

Some issues making the new video look as good as the old, but I am slowly working through those.

Thanks all for the input!