bad mobo

[joel_029]

Ok, well, I doubt the mobo is bad, but it gave me a real pain in the butt. I recently set up my new rig (MSI 865PE Neo2 FISR, P4 2.4c) and when I tried to boot up my drive (WinXP Pro) it would give me the boot options: Safe Mode, "/Network, Normal, etc...After selecting any option it would just reset my comp. I had to eventually boot from my XP CD and reinstall. Now none of my old settings are available, so I've started reinstalling programs, which is a total pain in the backside. I was wondering if there is a way that I can just import all of those settings back, but it doesn't seem so because I forgot to backup my registry.

My question is why did the booting error happen (Maxtor 40Gig, 5400rpm) and will I be able to get back all of my old settings without reinstalling everything? I also have my bro's 40 gig in my machine too and haven't tried booting it. So I have no idea if the problem has been replicated on his drive.

So if there are any ideas out there, or if you need more info to help me, please feel free to help out.

THX

 

[Chibi Nick]

I assume you just upgraded your pc with a new mobo and processor and such and used your old hdd? If so then it was probably a driver problem...

If it works now after a reinstall... how could it be anything to do with the mobo?

 

[URAMetroid]

I read on the net that it's recommedated to do a clean install of Windows after you install a new mobo (so you can revert back to the old mobo if the new one is bad or dead).

Why?
Windows expects to see the old mobo, but when you install a new one, Windows will try to use most of the old drivers and settings for the new mobo.
Plus, the i865 chipset is newer than Windows XP. Like a video card, you uninstall the old drivers before you install the new card, then you install the new drivers for that card.

 

[joel_029]

Thanks for the info. I figured that was the problem, but it's been 4 years since I upgraded. My old system was a P3 450. So needless to say I'm a little rusty at the moment.

So the remaining question is, is there anything I can do to prevent having to reinstall XP on my other drive? And if not, is there a way to keep all of the registry settings? Thanks for the help.

 

[jollyrancher]

Well you don't want to keep all the registry settings because some of these are the ones telling the software (most importantly, Windows) that you still have the old mobo. However, let's say you have a bunch of applications that have specific registry settings that you want to save, here's what you do:

1. Start -> run -> regedit
2. Navigate to HKEY Current User/Software
3. Click on the folder for the application that you want to save the settings for.
4. Registry -> export registry file. (save it on a floppy)
5. On the new HD (or the same one after reinstalling Windows) go back into the registry and do Registry -> import registry file.

 

[joel_029]

Ok. I reinstalled on my primary drive and everything works fine. I didn't export the registry before hand so I'll have to redo most of the stuff concerning my programs.

My last question is about my secondary drive. It also is running WinXP Pro, so is there a way that I can access it's registry and back it up from the primary drive? I just want to keep the program setup so that I don't have to reinstall everything on that drive too. If not I can always throw it back in the old box and back it up from there. It would just be more convenient doing in it from my new comp.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Doomulation]

I think it was \windows\system32\config and the file "system" that's the system registry. The local registry lies in the profiles (documents and settings\name) named something like ntuser.dat, I think. However, there's some things to beware here:

1) Exporting the user registry only will probably make you have to reinstall most programs anyway.
2) Exporting the system registry will probably make windows crash on you due to incorrect settings in the registry and there's nothing you can do to fix it since you can't get in :|