Impact on Win98 following processor upgrade

[PaulSinclair]

I've got a P166MMX based system (64MB) with 4GB HD, and it's time for an upgrade, to P3-550 or Athlon-500, new motherboard chipset, new AGP/modem cards and an 18GB primary HD.

To do this, I need to:
(a) Swap all the data, system settings files and programs from the old HD to the new one so it can be booted and act as my primary Windows drive. (got latest Drive Image, never used it)

and (b) presumably Windows and maybe some other programs have installed and configured themselves to work with my existing P166MMX. Will I need to reinstall all my software to get it to work with a better processor? I'm thinking of packages such as Win98, Office2K Pro, NaturallySpeaking V4, graphics packages...I guess some of these install versions of their core modules dependant on the CPU running, whether it supports SIMD or 3DNow - how do you update all this when the CPU changes?


I don't want to reinstall everything for one reason: simply because so many custom settings, icons, registry stuff etc has been done in the last year to get the system how I like it! Can anyone advise me what's the correct procedure to follow so I don't end up with an unusable or unoptimised system after upgrading the hardware?

[Apostle 83]

You can simply make a backup of your existing system and then, when you get your new system, restore "from different location" i believe.

[Pantion]

First make a full backup of all the data and then change the motherboard and processor.

Problems could come out when you change the motherboard and processor, since windows will try to reconfigure itself with all the new hardware assigned irqs, slots, etc.

Try it that way and if everything fails well wait for another post [img]/forum/smile.gif[/img] or try the last thing you want to do.... reinstall all the stuff [img]/forum/frown.gif[/img]

[drdeath]

personally, i have never had any problems with win98 after switching a motherboard and cpu. win98 just installes the new drivers for the motherboard, and it works fine. also, you do not need to worry about your programs - you wont have to reinstall everything because you change a cpu and mobo - they will remain unaffected

[PaulSinclair]

Thanks everyone, still not convinced. I still don't know enough to handle it. Is the consensus to reinstall Win98 on a new HD, then (somehow?) restore all the old stuff and their settings and customisations - I'm sure it'll foul up somewhere! More help please, especially from anyone who's done it!

drdeath - not sure I agree. The Athlon is a very much smoother beast than an old P166, and seems to reason that while most programs *could* run on it (that's backwards compatibility), most would run *very* sub-optimally and may even fall over unless I somehow adress the issue. Especially Windows itself, which probably has quite a few core routines which optimise depending on the CPU and system running.

Back to the question - what do I do? I just don't want to have to re-customise all those reg settings, toolbars, shortcuts, preferences, go through all the hassle of finding which DLL is causing instability...HELP!