• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Format when installing new mobo?

E

efrie

n00b
Joined
Dec 6, 2007
Messages
15
I'm curious about this as far as drivers go because most of the time motherboards tend to have quite a few drivers that go with them, and I was wondering if it's easier to just install the new motherboard and then reformat upon reboot or to just update the drivers?

Right now I have:
MSI K9N4-SLI
AMD X2 64 6000+
PQI 2x1GB DDR2 800
2x eVGA 8600GTS SSC 256MB

But tomorrow I'm going to have the Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe motherboard along with 2GB of Crucial Ballistix memory and then for Christmas I am getting two 8800GT KO's. So I had to upgrade my mobo and ram in order to support the video cards without a bottleneck.

So what do you guys think about changing the entire base of your pc? Just swap and deal with drivers or backup, install new mobo, then reformat?
 
Generally when you change a major component of your pc, you format and reinstall OS. Alot of the times there's a chance you'll get a BSOD during windows boot.

I say backup your stuff, then format/reinstall os once you swap the mobo.
 
I upgraded from a socket 939 platform with a NVIDIA chipset to a socket 775 platform with an Intel chipset. Windows XP booted without a hitch, and I just had to install the new drivers. If I could do it with that large of a change, you can with a much smaller change. ;) Make sure to backup first though just in case.

(I did reinstall Vista, but that's because I got 4 GB of RAM so I switched from the 32-bit version to the 64-bit version, not because it wouldn't boot. :D )
 
That brings me to my next question... Should I stick with XP Pro or bite the bullet and buy Vista Premium? It's funny, with XP I score higher in 3dmark05 as far as the 3dmarks, but my cpu score is much lower, but in Vista my 3dmark score is lower, while my cpu score is MUCH higher.

I will definitely upgrade when I get my 8800GT's because they will actually be able to really support DX10, but I don't think my two 8600GTS' can handle it.

XP or Vista for gaming?
 
If you have the disk space, just dual-boot and decide for yourself. ;) (Or triple-boot with Linux in there too, like I do.) I tend to use XP more myself, but then I don't have a DX10-compatable card yet. On the other hand, yours can, but at pithy frame-rates.
 
Yeah, I'd rather run DX9 at awesome framerates then try to render DX10 at mediocre framerates at medium settings. I think I'll keep XP 'till I get me new cards, then I'll upgrade with my extra Xmas money.
 
Since you are completely changing your system, I would completely reeinstall windows and use new drivers.
 
I upgraded from a socket 939 platform with a NVIDIA chipset to a socket 775 platform with an Intel chipset. Windows XP booted without a hitch, and I just had to install the new drivers.
Click to expand...
I've had this go good, and not so good. Even when it went good, some things were quirky.
A fresh install always goes the best.

Good Luck!
 
Nothing is quirky in my case at least, and it's been running for a few months now. ;) Going from one AM2 motherboard to another, both NVIDIA chipsets no less, a complete reinstall seems like a waste IMHO. Why not try it without a reinstall, and if things go bad, then reinstall? Instead of just assuming it's not going to work right.
 
run it and if it works fine, if not then reinstall. even repair. there is never a need to format but maybe you have to reinstall windows, repair might even work then you can keep all your settings.
 
DeFex said:
run it and if it works fine, if not then reinstall. even repair. there is never a need to format but maybe you have to reinstall windows, repair might even work then you can keep all your settings.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'd go with that order. You shouldn't have to format the whole partition (although sometimes this helps). When I switched from Athlon XP to A64 mobo, I got a BSOD. Can't remember what exactly I did, I might've been re-structuring my hard drive, so it's possible I formatted. A format is nice, but only when you don't have a lot of crap on the hdd/partition.

So just try things step by step until you're forced to reinstall.

Oh yeah, one more thing. If you're gonna dual boot with Linux, I STRONGLY recommend installing each OS on separate hard drives if your mobo supports booting from different devices (most likely does). When something goes wrong with your boot loader, you might get into a biiiiiig mess. Might be a good idea with XP/Vista as well, but that combo should be less problematic.
 
M'ichal said:
Oh yeah, one more thing. If you're gonna dual boot with Linux, I STRONGLY recommend installing each OS on separate hard drives if your mobo supports booting from different devices (most likely does). When something goes wrong with your boot loader, you might get into a biiiiiig mess. Might be a good idea with XP/Vista as well, but that combo should be less problematic.
Click to expand...

XP's bootloader is pretty simple and unproblematic, but watch out for Vista's. Vista's bootloader uses UUIDs instead of partition numbers, so if you mess with partitions, you might need to use bcdedit to find the new UUID that XP is on and set it to that in order for it to work. The problem is that you need to be able to boot into Vista in order to do that (AFAIK), so if after messing with partitions your Vista won't boot, you're in a bit of trouble. Not sure if BartPE would do the trick; it's based off of XP, but all Windows binaries can pretty much run on any version so it might work.

Linux's GRUB is nice as it can play well with either partition numbers or with UUIDs. ;)

This is a completely separate issue from replacing the motherboard though; the partition table should survive that just fine AFAIK.
 
i followed the tutorial for changing mobos

went from an MSI Neo2 Platinum 939
to an ASUS A8R32 MVP Deluxe 939.

to be honest - yes, it did work and i'm up and running but it does seem a lot buggier...

i might just reinstall anyways.
 
might as well reformat and reload windows.I went from asus to msi and had nothing but hell out of mine until i did.runs just fine now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top