[clue-tech] upgrade question

[skipworthy]

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FAR FAR BE IT FROM ME to defend Microsoft, but c'mon...

David Anselmi wrote:

>
> You can't move your Win2k install to a new motherboard.  Period, end 
> of sentence, been there, done that.  The reason is that Windows uses a 
> driver that is chipset specific to your IDE controller.  Once you go 
> to a new controller Windows will choke when it loads the wrong driver 
> (it will "boot" but then will give you a stop 0x7B).  I have seen 
> registry hacks you can use to change the driver but they're ugly (even 
> as registry hacks go).

Actually, I have done this very thing many times with *very few* issues 
at all: Though I agree that it may not be a good idea ( in fact I 
wouldn't recommend ti for a whole list of reasons), and it probably 
won't be real stable,  but it has a 99% chance of success: and if the 
machine will get past POST, and Win2k will boot and recognize the drive, 
you're more or less home free. Again, I agree that its better to get the 
newer drives going, but even a 'chipset specific' driver is unlikely to 
cause a stop error, and its even less likely that a 'registry hack' will 
make that much difference.

(Since the IDE standard has been around as long as it has, and 
controllers are now integrated with the drives and are designed for this 
, there are not many differences that will be consequential on that 
level.  You are much more likely to have that kind of stop error going 
the other way- booting a new disk in an old machine, or putting a drive 
in a motherboard that doesn't support the particular flavor of  the 
standard. And its that much more likely if one or the other systems is, 
say, a gateway or compaq that *does* use proprietary configurations of 
things.)

In fairness, I have seen situations where the disk itself proved to not 
be compatible with machines outside of a range of similar hardware, but 
that was a HARDWARE issue, not a 'windows is a piece of crap' issue.

just my 2 cents...

G