My experience with changing motherboards with windows 9x and NT and linux 9x: I always remove all motherboard resources in the device manager, and any others that are going bye-bye, before shutting down the last time with that board. After the new board is in, it redetects all the new resources. There shouldn't be any duplicates or anything. 95% of the time that works fine. NT: I do nothing. Shutdown the box, replaced the board. Powered up and everything was fine. I have done this twice. Once from a Single Pentium 100, changed to a Dual Pentium 133. Once from a Pentium 133, changed to Pentium II 266 (this box now runs Debian only). Although I MAY have reinstalled the last service pack installed, but I cant remember. Linux: I just make sure that any drivers the new board needs are compiled into the kernel before shutting down for the last time. Replace the board, and go. I havent reinstalled (format, reload all software) my main computer since DOS 5. I still have my DOS directory with all sorts of DOS based viewers and things. Norton Commander, svga.exe (viewer), all the DOS based archiving programs, etc. I upgraded to DOS 6.22, then Win3.11, then Win95, then Win95 OSR2, then Win98, then 98SE, then Windows 2000 with dual boot Debian. There have been about 5 or 6 total hardware changes. But the data and such is still there. This is just my experience. Not making any claims, or giving advice. You can all think I am crazy if you like. Andy Zbikowski wrote: > It's not just NT, replacing the motherboard on any windows system warrents a > reinstall. Windows 9x (and ME) will at least boot and run, but they seem to > do it in an unstable fashion. Example: OpenGL stuff worked fine on my old > motherboard. Swapped boards, and even trying to fire up something OpenGL > destablized windows to the point of rebooting. Linux didn't care, at all. > The only issue with Linux I've has is flashing the Motherboard BIOS. For > some reason Linux really didn't like that and wouldn't boot, and the > partitions we're all intact. > > NT is beyond all hope when it comes to hardware changes. But then again it's > NT, if you're changing the moterboard on it it's probally time to just > reinstall the OS anyway. If I haven't said enough yet, try figuring out how > to get read+write access to an NTFS filesystem without starting NT. If I > could figure that one out I'd be able easily pull some data off Sparky the > Server's RAID array. Yes, when I say Sparky I mean it. This server died with > sparks and a puff of smoke. The motherboard is charred in places. Looks like > 768MB out of 1024MB or RAM survived the experience. Anyone know a good > method of checking processors? > > -- > Andy Zbikowski, Sys Admin | (PH) 763-428-9119 (EX:132) > LTI Flexible Products, Inc. | (FAX) 763-428-9126 > 21801 Industrial Blvd | (PCS) 612-306-6055 > Rogers, MN 55374 | (WEB) http://www.ltiflex.com > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: tclug-list-unsubscribe at mn-linux.org > For additional commands, e-mail: tclug-list-help at mn-linux.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: tclug-list-unsubscribe at mn-linux.org For additional commands, e-mail: tclug-list-help at mn-linux.org