(tech vanity) Upgrading a PC with minimal system disruption

11/27/08 | marty_f

[martin_fierro]

I'm considering upgrading an older PC to a faster PC -- faster CPU, more RAM -- but with minimal disruption to my installed programs and without having to "upgrade" from XP to Vista.

Current PC uses include:

• Internet surfing
• Some graphics editing
• Editing/burning home movies onto DVD
• Not much gaming

Current system specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon 2600+
Graphics card: ATI All In Wonder 9000 Pro (64MB DDR AGP)
HD: Western Digital WD1200AB 120 GB

 

Am also considering getting a Mac, but for this thread I seek feedback on whether I can just migrate my current HD and Graphics Card over to a faster mobo/cpu (do they even make AGP slots anymore? Will this HD slow down system performance?)

[Tijeras_Slim]

It’s raining today.

[martin_fierro]

Get your a55 out into that nice, bright NM sunshine  5hit5torm and take some Flat Stanley pix, you pu55y.

[krogers58]

A few days reading at this site, and you’ll be one of the world’s foremost authorities on the latest in upgrading pc’s:

http://www.tomshardware.com/us/#redir

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I think changing the motherboard will trigger awareness in the MS checking routines and likely may cause a new install and all the headache that goes with that.

Others might be more knowledgable...since I rarely run any MS stuff.

[Gondring]

ping for later reference

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Let me emphasize a couple of points which I had assumed tacitly, but which I guess I ought to make explicit:

1) I was thinking in terms of preserving all of your old data and your old installed programs and your old registry settings, etc etc etc. The thing you want to avoid is having to start with a blank SATA II drive and then re-install all of your old programs and move all of your old passwords and try to remember all of your old registry settings, and if you're starting with a brand new hard drive, that nonsense can take a week or more [LITERALLY!!!]. The instructions I posted will quickly move all of your stuff over to a new, modern, very fast hard drive, and will preserve all of your old settings [plus you can get the redundancy of a "C:" drive which is physically separate from your "D:" drive by leaving copies of a file on both drives - assuming, of course, that you are not using a directory which was "junctioned" off of one drive and onto the other].

2) AGP is dead. Do NOT waste your time trying to fiddle with AGP at all [in either direction - if you have an old AGP card, then don't waste your time trying to find a new motherboard which will accept the card, and if you have an old motherboard with an AGP slot, then do not waste your time trying to find a new GPU which comes in an AGP form factor - again, AGP IS DEAD!!!].

[CE2949BB]

I’ve got an ATI AiW 9K in the box I’m on right now.

The last time I was in the market for a new card, ATI had killed off the AiW line.

Sucks. I like having a TV tuner and graphics card in one package. :(

Anyway. Enough crying.

The hdd is probably PATA and your AiW is (?) AGP.

I’m almost sure you’ll need to upgrade your motherboard, before anything else.

Unless you’re particularly fond of your case, might as well build a new box from scratch.

[PAR35]

I’d plug my old hard drive into the new computer, set up the bios to boot first from the old one, leave the new hard drive in for additional storage. Should work without problems. I usually plug my old hard drive in as the secondary drive and boot from the factory drive, but that wouldn’t do what you want.

As for the video card, I’d check to see if it is really an improvement over what the factory sent.

[js1138]

So keep the old HD as a slave to a new HD with a new install of XP?

Not exactly. First clone the old hard drive to a new one. Both WD and Seagate have free downloadable software for cloning drives.

Assuming the new computer or motherboard is ready, install the old hard drive as the one and only drive. If you are not switching CPU brands, it should boot up without trouble.

Next, you may run into the problem that the network card drivers are not available, so you can't immediately activate XP.

I've seen situations where no activation was necessary, ones where I was given the thirty days grace, and ones where I had to call Microsoft. This may depend on how many time a particular XP license has been moved. I do a lot of upgrades, and some systems have been upgraded more than once.

If the network works, you may sail through activation. If not, you will need to install the motherboard drivers first. If XP says you can't proceed, you will need to call MS and argue that you are repairing the computer. The fact that you haven't switched hard drives (yet) is in your favor. I've had to do this three times out of a couple dozen upgrades.

Something I forgot. I've seen Dell and Gateway machines that had XP installed with a CD key different from the one on the sticker on the side of the machine. There's a program called keyfinder that will tell you what the actual key is. The worst time I had with Microsoft involved one of these situations. I find that persistence on the phone pays off. They seem to have instructions that anyone who asserts they are not pirating the software will win. You need to know, however, that OEM versions of XP are not licensed to move to a new computer. So any discussion needs to involve a repair.

[Redcloak]

If I were you, I'd serially seriously consider ditching the idea of trying to preserve the programs installed on the old drive. Of course, you'll want that drive around, either as a 2nd HD or as an external drive in an enclosure; but, keeping the old software running may be more trouble than its worth.

First off, Windows may not be able to handle the sudden appearance of all the new hardware. I've seen Windows freak out in the past when a drive was moved to a new box that was too different from the old one. A fresh install will also get rid of a lot of "Windows rot" since you'll be getting (somewhat more) debugged updates from MSFT. (Instead of a collection of patches and bandaids that have accumulated over the years!)

Also, you may find that there's a lot of software on the old drive that you aren't using. I suggest that you install titles as you need them. This means less clutter and less potential for conflicts between programs.

Or you could just go out tomorrow and buy a Mac.

(Well... Someone had to say it!)

[shorty_harris]

Boy, I'm probably gonna get hammered for this, but some of these 'solutions' sound downright painful.

I like to start fresh whenever I upgrade. I keep a logbook of my latest computer settings (installed apps, hardware descriptions, network settings, etc.). I keep backups of data and documents on a network drive (I do a backup just before the upgrade). If I'm working with windows, I keep a copy of current drivers I'll need on a CD (I don't use anything later than Windows 2000 Pro, so I don't have to deal with activation). I assemble the hardware, wipe the drive (if I'm using the old one), and install the OS from scratch. I reinstall all the apps (getting the latest versions in the process), and transfer data over from the network drive. I don't get an exact copy of the previous machine, but I always get a better copy!

My latest upgrade (which I got carried away with, and it ended up being an entirely new machine) is a Shuttle SG31G2 Barebone, an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU, a WD Caviar 500GB SATA drive, and 4GB Kingston RAM. It's running Ubuntu 8.04 64bit. The on-board video seems OK for me, but I can add a video card later if I want to. So far I've only used it for ripping DVD's, besides the usual net surfing. I like it.

[JerseyHighlander]

You can buy a better HD graphic card this week for under $30 delivered. check slickdeals.net
You can buy a mobo and cpu combo kit for under $120. microcenter.com and others
You can buy 2GB DDR2 RAM for under $35. buy.com slickdeals.net amazon.com and others
(optional) buy aftermarket cpu and/or gpu coolers.
You can download the mobo and cpu drivers for your new parts from driverpacks.net and install it on your current pc before opening the case. This way when you switch the hardware components, the drivers are already registered in the current windows XP install.
You can also on your current pc, run a small program from http://www.p2plife.com/forums/Guide_On_How_To_Circumvent_WGA_WPA_WGN_and_WGV-t714.html to bypass the WPA and avoid the BSD.
On your current pc before opening it up, create mobo BIOS flash floppy/thumbdrive disks if needed. (optional)

You post enough on FR that I know yuo can accomplish all of this in under 4 hours of labor from the point you receive all the hardware at your desk.

[JerseyHighlander]

As someone above said, to be safe, use your current ATA drive as the C drive when you install the new mobo/cpu.
Once you use the WPA workaround .exe in the link in the above post, you can then clone your ATA drive to your new SATA drive. I prefer Acronis trueimage, but norton ghost and others work just as well.
also note that antivirus software must be completely turned off when unzipping and running the WGA and WPA hacks on that website. i.e. if you use symantec, you have to manually turn off rtscan.exe and the rest of the symantec antivirus suite background programs before unzipping, otherwise the exe is seen as a virus and quarantined.

And I have no idea if the WGA and WPA hacks are viruses, but the source code has been peer reviewed for over 2 years each, and work well.

[Mr. K]

dude- i dont know if you priced PC’s lately but you can get a complete system 10 times better than this for $400

[zeugma]

Howdy Martin,

Others have responded more to your point, so I figured I'd go off on a tangent a little bit.

You might consider a Linux system rather than Windows or OSX. Let me describe for you my setup and how I do OS upgrades, as the process might appeal to you.

I'm currently running Fedora 8, which is a RedHat dirivatve. I have a separate hard drive for the OS and applications from my /home partition.

I upgraded about 6 months or so from Fedora 7. Here's the process:  DO A BACKUP FIRST! I generally do a fresh install of the OS because I've had issues in the past doing upgrades. Wen doing the upgrade, I tell it to ignore the disk that has /home on it. Then once the OS is in place,  and all the extra software is installed (audio/video codecs mostly), I simply login as myself. Because I didn't touch /home, I have my entire desktop still available including all preferences.

Being able to split things up that way sure makes life easier.

I don't know if OSX will let you do that, but I'm reasonably sure there is no way to get MS-Windows to be as quick and painless.

I've actually followed this procedure for the last 4 times I upgraded my OS, and it works great.

[Mr. K]

OMG no`! i was wondering how long it would take before a Linux geek became totally irrelivant here.

They don’t seem to understand grandma does not live to maintain her computer (like they do) she just wantt so look at pictures her children send in the email.

So they ave no idea what “I’m currently running Fedora 8, which is a RedHat dirivatve. I have a separate hard drive for the OS and applications from my /home partition. I upgraded about 6 months or so from Fedora 7” means (i dont either and I do this stuff for a living

Linux geeks have wasted more of our company time and resources creating ‘open source’ free code for the masses! (while my company pays them to goof off)

[RichardW]

Personally I can’t see the point. In fact I wouldn’t upgrade to another desktop, although I have two new ones. Just get a good laptop. It will do everything you will need to do and for good measure are actually easier to work on.

But if you want a desktop (or a laptop) I would advise anyone to go to the Dell Outlet Center and pick out one that fits your needs. I replaced my four year year old machines with new fully configured machines (yes, they were Vista) and sold my old XP machines for about for what I paid for the new machines. You can migrate most of the stuff over to the new machine easily enough and donate the old machine to charity or sell it if you are lucky. For reasons that elude me people don’t like Vista but it works fine for me and it doesn’t lock up at all. But I digress.

And for good measure, here is a tip for anyone. Just download free “Open Office” which will read Word and Excel documents just fine. I do see, however, that Office 2007 Home and School Edition (allowing for up to three installations) on sale for $69 if one is so inclined.

I just wouldn’t waste my time with the older machines. They aren’t worth it. I’ve owned perhaps 15 PCs in my life and I’ll not buy another desktop although I would have gotten a larger 17” screen laptop if I had to do it over. The Toshiba keyboard is top notch and they are practically giving them away these days. The screen resolution is about perfect. What is there not to like?

[ken in texas]

Plenty of other replies here... and now for my $0.02.

You really might be better off just purchasing a new machine and migrating your data after reinstalling apps. But, if you insist on a motherboard swap, you will need to be prepared to hold XP's hand for a while, because you might be switching to a different underlying chipset; moving from an AMD processor to Intel complicates it even more.

Make sure you have all of your data backed up, and then go Googling for something like "XP motherboard swap". It's not trivial, but it can be done. Much will depend on your level of expertise and whether or not you have access to your Windows XP install CD.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that if you have installed XP service packs, your install CD might be considered outdated by the system and no longer useable. Then you might be looking at a clean install anyway, assuming your OEM license will permit it.

[zeugma]

They don’t seem to understand grandma does not live to maintain her computer (like they do) she just wantt so look at pictures her children send in the email.

Funny. After spending more time than I care to mention troubleshooting my mom's laptop with XP on it, I finally got sick of it, and installed Linux for her. Amazingly, for the next two years, I didn't get a single call from her for support. Everything just worked.

It also might be worth noting, that my earlier response on this thread was not to some mythical "grandma", but was in response to a query from a ppster here of long standing, who obviously knows a bit more about computers than your your average folk, because of the nature of his question.

(i dont either and I do this stuff for a living

Apparently the "stuff" you do for a living doesn't have anything to do with Unix, or what I'd said would be completely clear. Clicking buttons on a windows box does not an expert in computers make. Folks who know unix invariably have to deal with the slop microsoft push on the world. It would be better, the reverse were true as well, you might actually learn something about how computers actually work.

Linux geeks have wasted more of our company time and resources creating ‘open source’ free code for the masses! (while my company pays them to goof off)

Sounds like a management issue to me. Personally, I see much more money thrown down rat holes on the microsoft side of the house than elsewhere.