The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

If the chipsets are radically different you'll have to reinstall since Windows never seems to get rid of the old drivers and will revert to back to those. You can get rid of the old drivers but it is too much of a pain and much easier/better to just reinstall clean.

If it is for a women I would install Seven but if it is for a old man I would install XP for a surf machine. Women like pretty and will get a big kick out of the new UI were as old men don't want change and won't appreciate the updated UI, in fact it will be too confusing for them to learn a new structure.

 

I really need to sit down with her tonight. Get her thoughts on her 7 and XP machine. And why she insists on using the older machine more...

 

Oman7,

I've used Driver Magician to remove all the drivers, providing the old motherboard still works, even when switching from Intel to AMD, without reinstalling XP. I've done it with different chipsets of the same brand too! Just remove the drivers on the old motherboard and then switch the motherboard The main problem is usually the chipset drivers. If you can't remove the chipset drivers, the computer will likely bsod and you would have to replace XP. I've never come across one I couldn't remove yet though. I've seen it happen to others, and heard about it, but maybe I've just been lucky! Maybe it's my Older version of XP (2003), with SP-1 on a separate disk.

You can also use the Device Manager and uninstall the drivers manually. Just go through the hardware and uninstall each driver for everything you have on the old MB that will be different on the new one. Be sure to turn off automatic updates first, just to be on the safe side

Driver Magician does pretty much the same thing as you would do manually, but a lot faster. I's easy to use, and removes all the drivers with one click after you select which drivers you want to uninstall.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

So apparently her main reason for using the old machine is because the version of AOL is better(9.0). Her windows 7 machine uses version 9.5. What the differences are is something we'll have to talk about. Perhaps I can persuade her to use the new version, by teaching her new ways of doing things. But she's the type who doesn't like change.

Thanks for the useful tips guys.

 

Kev I have been using AOL 9.7 for about 8 months, I really have not notices any difference from 9.5.

 

9 point ZERO apparently has a difference compared to 9.5.

 

You might be able to still install 9.0 on a new machine here is a link for 9.0VR which is suppose to run on broadband or dialup connections.

AOL® 9.0VR works with either a broadband or dial-up connection

If she likes AOL and doesn't like change you better stay with XP as well, Seven will be too much for her.

 

Kev all of AOL's 9's are relatively the same, not much of a change, it's all minor, nothing like jumping from XP to 7, tell her don't be scared of it she will hardly notice any difference, just my 2 cents.

 

She has already used 9 and 9.5 and doesn't like 9.5 so apparently she sees a change.

 

Woo just got myself a rather vicious rootkit and had to reformat today. Lovely.

EDIT: Even lovelier, it survived the reformat. Time for Killdisk... One of the few times I'm ultra glad to have decentralized my storage. Only ~30GB worth of OS partition to wipe.

Have it down to an exact science. Backup my documents, my desktop, and my rocketdock settings, reformat. Paste everything back over, reinstall my few small programs(under 20) and bam. Everything back like it never happened within an hour or so. Would make it even leaner but the only thing that can be RELIABLY installed to a separate drive and work normally after a format is games and the programs associated with them. All my small utilities rely on OS integration and thus have to be freshly installed every time.

 

You can have your whole profile (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Favorites, and so on...) on another disk or partition without issue then all you have to do is image your OS drive and in 20 minutes you're up and running.

OS -> C: drive
Profile -> D: drive
Programs -> E: drive
and so on...

 

Accidentally click on something you shouldn't have?

I really hate false download links. ---->DOWNLOAD<----

False links have taught me to watch the lower area of firefox when I hover over a link. It tells me what I'm about to click

 

Ahh, but that would require more storage, and more storage means more drives, and more drives means more money

I have used Norton Ghost before to good effect. And probably will at some point but it takes me what 30-45 minutes to a perfectly clean install... An hour because I was watching TV too lol. That includes all utilities and tools up to date. I'd say it's reasonably close to the speed of copying over an image and poking around the web updating your stuff anyway.

Omega: Kinda, this actually happened in a search for 3rd party 360 controller drivers. I had to manually install them into the windows\system32\drivers and windows\inf folder, then install a front end GUI. All to be able to set a deadzone on an aging left joystick lol.

Ironically, the file with the virus was what I needed. I suspect I actually picked it up from the site I went to for the download, as the drivers work fantastically and I can now use my left joystick for emulators again

 

No it wouldn't, why?

You have the same amount of data on the same size drive, you just distribute it across 3 partitions instead of 1. It is the smartest way to setup your system, businesses do just that, at least most do. The only times I've setup a system all on my drive/partition is when the people are too novice and not capable of learning to install new programs to the D: or E: or F:... drives. With XP this was no problem as you could easily change the default locations for Program Files & Common to another drive. With Seven it is a bit more difficult without running into issues, but can be done.

I use to use Ghost but it has never been great and only has gotten worst. I use True Image but Paragon makes a good tool too as well as some free programs that are decent. I have a friend that like Windows 7 Backup but for me it is to limited on what you can backup and what you can recover. He just does a full system backup and for that it is fine.

 

Most of my programs, games and other files are indeed installed to another drive. In this case the I:\ drive. But a small certain amount of programs rely on OS shell integration for functionality, and thus need to be reinstalled to the OS drive after every format.

If I were to make a disk image of a clean install, I would need a place to store the image, thus storage space, which is at a premium for myself currently. Plus the installed programs on said image would be out of date ie it's just as quick to reformat and update my files manually anyway.

 

The few programs, and there aren't many that won't install to another drive partition, would not take that much space on your OS partition and would compress to (2) - (4) DVD's for backup. That certainly should not be a big deal or cost much even at a $1 per disk if you used premium disc's. And as to storing them that also should not be an issue even with 25 DVD's it's just a small cake spindle.

If programs are out of date they are out of date whether you re-install or not so I don't see that to be an issue out of the ordinary, or it sure shouldn't be. Even AV Suites will still update or ask for a new key if they are out of date.

At any rate it is always faster to re-image than re-install. I backup all of my partitions on all of my PC's that way I'm covered and it works very well when the shat hits the fan. I plan on using BD's for my new backups since they are cheap and much larger but for now I just backup to DVD.

 

DVDs are ludicrously slow

 

I prefer hard drives now, but given the problem (Wink wink), buying them is out of the question. Unless vital of course.

 

Slow? What kind of excuse is that? You backup and retrieve, you don't run on the DVD's. I can re-image within a half hour to an hour verses a whole day to re-install everything, SLOW????

Pretty lame...

 

Nope check my posts I can have it done and up to date within about an hour, from blank drive to like it never happened.