Migrating HD from AMD => Intel (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

Does anyone know of a good procedure to migrate a hard drive from an Athlon AMD motherboard/CPU setup to an Intel P4 motherboard/CPU setup? We are trying to avoid having to rebuild the hard drive from scratch.

 

[Matt DeVillier]

change motherboard chipset = OS clean install. anything else is asking for problems.

 

[Patrick Sun]

That's what we were afraid of. I also thought it would be a tough issue to deal with, just wanted to make sure I exhausted the possibilities.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

You could try uninstalling every single device from the list, then shut down and not reboot until the drive is in the new system.

If that doesn't work (and there's a good chance it wont even boot), reinstall.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Man, that's got heartbreak written over it. If the guy is desperate enough and has the time, we might try that suggestion.

 

[Michael D. Bunting]

How about purchasing a cheap HD (20 OR 30 GB) and set it up as the master with the existing HD setup as a slave?

Once everything is installed, you can move stuff from one drive to the other....and then f disk the old drive for more storage space...

 

[Glenn Overholt]

While still in the old system, remove all of your motherboard drivers. When it asks to reboot, just say no! Shut it down and pull the drive.

Put the drive into the new system with the new drivers diskready.

Some of them are transparent. You would be better off removing just all all hardware drivers from every device that you have, and letting Windows reinstall them, as it may have a driver or two that is specific for that type of motherboard.

Glenn

 

[Tekara]

this always works for me:
1. migrate the harddrive
2. boot computer off the windows install CD
3. run the repair installation

this will reinstall all the drivers and leave the programs alone.

I'm not going to garuntee this though, but I have yet had this fail for me.

 

[Jeremy Anderson]

With Win9x/ME/etc., you just go into the control panel and remove EVERYTHING from the system devices list. This will force it to redetect all hardware the next time you boot, which you do once the hard drive is in the new machine. If you run into any problems with it detecting stuff that isn't there or using the wrong driver, look for the file DRIVERS.DDB in WINDOWSINF or WINDOWSSYSTEM and delete it. This is the driver database. If you delete it, the next time it tries to add hardware, Win9x will rebuild it from scratch and use the correct drivers.

With WinXP, you do exactly what Rob.M.G. said to do. You'll go through just like you were doing a fresh install of XP and at one point it will say something like "XP is already installed on that partition. Would you like to repair the existing installation?" It will redetect all drivers and make any changes it needs to. I've done this countless times and haven't had an issue yet. In fact, my current hard drive was migrated from a Pentium III 700 to this AMD 2200+ with no problems.

 

[Kirk Gunn]

Is this XP ?

 

[DaveGTP]

Patrick, I was surprised how Windows XP did on a changeover.


I switched from an 750Mhz Athlon Thunderbird/KT133 board/ SDRAM/ATI Radeon 7200 video, modem, ISA ethernet... to a Athlon XP 1700+ & KT333 board w/DDR ram, Radeon 8500, no modem, different ethernet card. - I accidently booted from the primary drive when I was tinkering with it. I was amazed when I saw it booting - it just went nuts, uninstalling and reinstalling for about 10-15 minutes, and ended up perfectly stable.

From what I hear, the removing devices before disassembly and letting it auto detect again has worked OK for more than just me.

I would second the new primary drive, and setting up the primary as secondary - that's what I have almost always done. But I will testify that a major upgrade worked perfectly fine for me. I am still too suspicious to trust it, experience with Windows tells me not to trust it.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

From what I recently saw on The Screensavers changing motherboards with more recent versions of Windows isn't incredibly painful. Just back up any important data and give it a shot.

 

[Carlo_M]

In theory Windows XP (and even the older Win OSes) autosenses new hardware and looks for the best drivers available. Now if you change one or two peripherals, WinXP usually has no problem. But a whole processor/mobo/etc. change might be too much for it to handle. Don't forget that the mobo isn't only one "device"--it's many. Built in sound and video are separate devices. USB controller, memory controllers, IDE, network, ports--all are/could be tied into the mobo and WinXP might be able to handle all of that...and it might not.

Bottom line is it's a crapshoot. DaveGTP's experience is definitely within spec for WinXP's capabilities, I just wouldn't count on getting those results every time someone tries to change major components.

 

[Patrick Sun]

We'll be deleting all the device drivers, shutting the PC down, and then installing the HD in the other PC with the new MB/CPU/etc, and crossing our fingers.

The OS is Windows 2000 Server.

 

[Robert Dunnill]

I agree with Jeremy; I usually install a Promise ATA/66 IDE adapter before running the "Repair" to avoid a potential problems with an "inaccessbile boot device." Once, I had to use two CD-ROM drives, as well; one attached to an onboard IDE port, and another attached to the Promise (because the former was BIOS-bootable but not recognized by Win2K prior to plug'n'play detection).

I used this technique to migrate an XP Home HTPC installation from a PIII-800 to an AMD-based one, and it worked perfectly time it was tested, even the problematic Holo3Dgraph-I deinterlacing card and the onboard 5.1 sound).

RD