Problems moving W2K to older mobo

[Arcturius]

Hi all,

I have a problem that currently has me baffled. I'm trying to move from a Gigabyte GA-7VRXP (KT333) to an Abit KR7A-133 (KT266). My boot drive is a 36GB IBM 36Z15 attached to an LSI Logic LSI8955U U160 host adapter. The rest of the machine is comprised of an Athlon XP 1800+, 1x 512MB module of Corsair PC3200, a Visiontek GF3 Ti200, an Adaptec 2940UW, a Netgear FA310TX, an Audigy, a LiteOn DVD player, LiteOn burner, and a 60GB IBM 120GXP.

I have tried with the bare minimum hardware (mobo+proc+mem+video+host adapter+disks) but Win2K locks before going graphical--all but four 'notches' of the text-based progress bar complete before the machine hard locks.
When I plug the disks back into the old mobo (7VRXP) all is well.
Also, the only new piece of hardware destined to be on the KR7A is the Netgear NIC (which is currently not installed).

I've tried running the Win2K repair option from the install CD, and I've also removed as many drivers as I could (onboard LAN, RAID, etc.) that were specific to the old board.
Also, a new install of Win2K on the same disk (I had some slack space) works fine.

I didn't expect this kind of frustration when moving between two VIA boards. Has anyone else run into this? Any ideas?

[Mikey Boo]

not sure if this will help u out, but give it a try i guess... on ur win2k cd the should be a folder called bootdisk, i think its called that. anyways when u click on to it it will promt u for a floppy, should be 4 in total when done. then when u have them start from a floppy install. this might help, i had to do this on my old abit bp6 setup, thats how i got win2k pro to work for me...

[jtroutma]

Sounds like you moved between two difference chipsets. WinNT, Win2K, and WinXP do NOT like to operate between difference MB much less different chipsets.

When you install any of these OS on your system, it makes a CUSTOM install of drivers specific to that MB. I have been trying for at least a year to figure out a way to keep an installation of Win2K and move between MB. The only GOOD way of doing this is to completely reinstall Win2K.

If you are deperate in keeping your copy of 2K running and move MB, try going BACK to the old MB, boot into safe mode, and change the Computer Type under the Device Manager to Standard Computer. You do this by updating the driver on the device that is located under that section.

Also remove EVERY ITEM under System Devices.

I make NO guarranty that any of these tips will work but they may be worth a try. One last thing to consider; if you do manage to get 2k to work with the other MB, it will NOT perform to its potencial becuase it was not the original board that was used to install from.

Again the best thing to do is save your data and start over.

[Arcturius]

Thanks, I'll try that when I get home.

Like I said, it does boot just fine with the old mobo, and I tried deleting all of the extra drivers; I was hoping that the VIA chipset drivers would be OK, since AFAIK the VIA drivers are unified within a processor generation.

We'll see how it goes!

[Arcturius]

Switching the driver to "Standard PC" after booting with the 'old' motherboard did the trick. Interestingly enough, it failed booting again when I tried updating the 'computer' driver to switch back to ACPI Uniprocessor.

I'll definitely finish configuring my other W2K install, but at least the old one is functional for now.

Thanks jtroutma!!

[jtroutma]

The reason why it failed again was because you tried to update it TO the ACPI Uniprocessor driver. I have found only a FEW AMD MB that will support that driver. If you update the the "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface PC (ACPI)" that should still allow you to boot into the OS.

But personally, stick with the "Standard PC" driver. The only difference is that with "Standard PC" it is allowing the BIOS to control the resources of the comuter vs. "ACPI PC" where the OS is controlling the resources. I usually FORCE my older AMD boards to use "Standard PC" driver because the Win2K ACPI driver dumps ALL PCI and the AGP IRQs to the sime value. (YUCK!!!)

Glad to hear that it worked for you.

Let me know if you have any other problems.

[Arcturius]

Initially, on all of the W2K installs I've done, I thought that Windows had used the "ACPI Uniprocessor" driver; and I've used quite a few different K7 chipsets with W2K--KT133, KT133E, KLE133, KT266, KT333 and SiS730 (strangely nothing by AMD...). I just checked, and the SiS based machine is using the plain ACPI PC driver--I'll have to check the KT266 and KT333 machines when I get home.

Side note--one machine transitioned fine from the KT133E to the KT333 w/o reinstalling W2K.

Now I'm curious to find out if I can simply move to the plain ACPI driver from Standard PC, since it appears that there is a significant performance hit in switching to "Standard PC".

[jtroutma]

There should be no performance hit when in "Standard PC" vs "ACPI PC". The only thing that driver really does is tell the OS who controls the resources of the machine; the OS or the BIOS. The only slow down that could be a result of switching drivers would be with having two major devices in your machine sharing the same IRQ. Say your video card is sharing the same IRQ as your sound card or NIC. THAT would cause a few slowdowns/problems.

I have been using the "Standard PC" driver ever since I moved to Win2K because I HATED the fact that with the system would automatically install and use the "ACPI PC" driver, ALL my devices would share the same IRQ. It must be an issue of whether or not the BIOS supports MPU V1.4 becuase my new Epox 8DRA+ does support it and will allow the "ACPI Uniprocessor" driver to work where the last 3 MB I had did not (all ABIT). I have been wanting to use the "ACPI Uniprocessor driver for quite some time.

One other thing that you will notice between the "Standard PC" and "ACPI PC" drivers is that when you shutdown the system, you have to manually power off the machine while in "Standard PC"

BTW you can FORCE Win2K to install a specific "PC" type driver during the install process. At the screen where you see "Hit F6 to specify a special hardware driver", you can hit either F5 or F7 and it will ask you what driver type to install. Works great.

Anything else?