Dave-H

Thanks again all. CloneDisk looks pretty straightforward, and it looks as if I can use that to make a clone of the whole system disk, which contains the C: and D: partitions. I have a 150GB FAT32 formatted plug-in IDE disk, which is at the moment only being used to back up some video files that are also backed up elsewhere, so I could use that as the destination. It won't be a real clone of course as the source and destination disks are a different size and type. Would I need to delete all the video files from it first? The CloneDisk documentation doesn't say what happens to any existing files on the destination drive. Presumably if the disk is re-partitioned (it's a single logical drive in an extended partition at the moment) it will all get zapped anyway. My "new" quad core processors arrived today, I've fitted them to the motherboard and also fitted the 4GB of memory that came with it. So, once the preparation is done, I'm now ready to physically swap the boards!

Ah, thanks yet again jaclaz! I wondered what cdob meant by its "real" name! I didn't realise that it got renamed. It is indeed originally halmacpi.dll, version 5.1.2600.5512.

Thanks again @jaclaz, that's given me a lot more confidence! I rather lazily only looked at the TechNet documentation for PE, which made it look quite frightening. MistyPE looks straightforward to use, I will investigate using it. You're quite right I really must make an image of the system disk, which contains the C: (Windows 98SE) and D: (Windows XP) drives. Just to complicate things even further, the XP Program Files and Documents & Settings folders are on C:, not on D:! I may need to go out and buy another IDE drive to do this though, as I don't have a spare one large enough. Thanks @cdob too, it's heartening that you think it will be straightforward! My present system is recorded as an ACPI Multiprocessor PC in Device Manager, as expected, but it says it's using hal.dll, whereas the MS article seems to be saying that it should be using halmacpi.dll. That file exists on the system, but only in the Service Pack files folder, so it isn't actually being used by the system. Any idea why that would be and whether this is going to be another potential source of problems? Cheers, Dave.

Thanks again, especially for the incredibly useful links! I don't know what I would do without the members of this forum, you have helped me so much so many times now. Glad to see from the MS article that aborting the setup before changing the board is just an alternative to running a repair after installing it, as you would have to do if the original board was dead. As I said, I'm hoping not to have to do that, but there's only one way to find out! I did some research on Windows PE, and that looks complicated to deploy. I'm really hoping I don't have to get into that. At the end of the day, if Windows XP refuses to start at all with the new board, and I can't resolve it, I hopefully still have the option of putting the old board back and then scratching my (and your) head(s) again, unless the failed attempt has irrevocably damaged my original installation, which I hope won't be the case!

Thanks jaclaz! Looking at that link, of course the dreaded HAL comes up, which is something else that's been worrying me. I've had systems where it's failed to boot with the "can't find HAL" error, and had to repair them, and this could well happen again of course. Interesting that the procedure on the link seems to involve starting off the install process, and then aborting it before changing the motherboard, and then letting it continue with the new board. I don't really want to do that if there's any chance that it won't be necessary. If I do have to do a repair install, I just hope that the installer is clever enough not to over-write all the SP3 system files (and their updated versions) with SP2 files, as the full installation disk I have is only SP2. I do have an SP3 installation disk but it's a clean install only OEM disk, so I don't want to use that. Incidentally Den recommended making a clone of my system drive onto an identical drive, but as my system drive is a SCSI drive that's not an option as I wouldn't be able to source an identical drive. I will of course back up all my system and data files onto other removable hard drives before I attempt anything!

Thanks Den, wise words as always! Thank you so much for those links too. One thing I hadn't mentioned about my existing system is that the system drives are not IDE connected, they are SCSI drives that work through an Adaptec PCI-X SCSI card. Whether this will make things easier or harder remains to be seen, but the problems mentioned with wrong IDE drivers preventing access to the boot drive hopefully won't occur as long as the SCSI board is recognised OK by the BIOS. It's using the Microsoft provided Adaptec driver in XP which should still be fine. Someone has reported on one of the links that they did get the system to boot OK without having to repair the installation, which was good to hear. At least I'm using a motherboard of the same brand with the same type of processors, so that's a plus point too. I'm prepared to have to re-activate XP if it's unhappy about apparently being on a different computer. I have the disk it was installed from, which is a full install disk, not an OEM or upgrade disk, so I'm not expecting any problems with that. As an aside, I did something similar to this with my netbook in fact, which is dual boot XP and 8.1. I found a better specified unit with Windows 7 Starter on it, and I just swapped the hard drives over. I had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get Windows 8.1 activated again, involving putting in huge strings of numbers from an automated telephone system, but Windows XP just booted and carried on as if nothing had happened! The two systems were quite similar though with almost the same Intel chipset and processor. The spec of the new unit was slightly better, but the main difference was that the memory could be upgraded to 4 GB, which was physically impossible in the original unit.

Hi again guys. Just wanted to update you on where I am now with this. I have now obtained a used Supermicro X7DAL-E motherboard, which I was very lucky to get from a guy in Germany for £65 including shipping, and it came with two 2.33 GHz dual core Xeon processors with heat sinks, and 4 GB of memory. As that's the equivalent of around $108, I think I got a bargain there! Although originally designed for XP/Server 2003 of course the seller said it had been running Windows 7 fine, which was good to hear. I was puzzled to find that the physical layout of my board was quite different in places to the diagram in the printed manual which came with it. On further investigation, I found that the board I have is actually a later revision which was updated to add support for quad core processors (the manual that came with it says dual core only). The information and later manual on the Supermicro site confirm this, so I decided to see if I could find the best processors that the board was capable of supporting. Again I was very lucky to find someone selling used on eBay the quad core 3.16 GHz Xeons that are the maximum I can use. They cost me £40 (around $67) each. Another bargain because I found some companies still selling them new for over $1000 each! I was hoping to have them by now, but I should now get them on Monday. What I'm now intending to do is to fit the quad core processors to the board, with the 4 GB of RAM that came with it, and just swap the "new" motherboard with my present one. I'm hoping (praying!) that Windows XP will just work, although it will have to sort out the drivers of course (I've got the latest ones from Supermicro burnt onto a bootable CD.) I have also had to buy a new graphics card of course, as my old board was AGP, and I've got a cheap ASUS 1 GB AMD Radeon based card. When (if) Windows XP is up and running again, then I'll really pray hard and try to boot into Windows 98. I suspect it may well not start up at all, and at very least it will have severe problems with the graphics. I remember how hard it was to get it to work with a 512 MB graphics card, I would imagine it will choke badly with a 1 GB one! I'll keep you all posted! Cheers, Dave.

Yes, a very critical security patch I guess that couldn't wait!

Interested to be offered an update to Silverlight by Microsoft Update today. I don't know if that's because I'm also getting the Windows XP Embedded updates, I had assumed that no further updates would be offered for any MS programs on XP now.

There is a much later unofficial service pack now for 98SE here. Give that a try. Good luck!

Indeed, if you looked at Help>About Internet Explorer in IE6, it always still said that it was SP2 even after updating Windows XP to SP3. Although there obviously were many subsequent updates after it changed from SP1 to SP2, that never changed. IIRC MS were actually asked why they didn't include IE7 with XP SP3, and they said they decided to let people upgrade IE manually only if they wanted to.

I didn't think there was a SP3 for IE6, perhaps it came out after I upgraded to IE8. IIRC IE6 SP2 came with Windows XP SP2 (it was never released for Windows 2000), but Windows XP SP3 didn't include an update for IE.

Well I got a reply from Supermicro. Not unexpectedly they just said that the X7DVL-E hasn't been in production for many years and (of course) was never tested with Windows 8. That doesn't mean that it won't work with it of course. My present board, an X5DAE, was never tested with Windows 98, but works fine with it! I have asked them if they have any other recommended hardware for what I want to do.

I guess the only way to find out if I can deactivate and uninstall Windows 8.1 from my netbook and then use the same disks to do a new install and activation on another machine is to actually try it! I still think I'll go with Windows 8 as long as Supermicro come back and tell me it will be OK. Otherwise I'll look on eBay for some Windows 7 FPP disks. That's how I got my Windows 2000 to Windows XP upgrade!

LOL, well of course that could well indeed be an issue, but if I can't now install and activate the 64bit version I can presumably deactivate and uninstall the 32bit version from my netbook if necessary.

Thanks Den, of course I value your opinion immensely! The reason I was going to go with 8.1 was simply because I already have a 64bit Windows 8 installation disk, which was sent to me when I upgraded my netbook from Windows 7 Starter to Windows 8. They sent a 32bit disk and a 64bit disk, and I only used the 32bit version on the netbook of course. It was a cheap upgrade offered when Windows 8 launched which I wasn't really eligible for as I only had Windows 7 Starter, but I tried it and it worked! I later did the free upgrade to Windows 8.1, which I would hope to be able to do again. From experience with my netbook, once you've put Classic Shell on it, Windows 8.1 seems fine. Classic Shell is one of those programs that is so brilliant you can't believe that it's actually free! I now have a start menu on Windows 8.1 that looks and acts exactly the same as the start menu of Windows 98 and XP, which actually makes Windows 8.1 usable IMO. Classic Shell even allowed you to boot straight to the desktop before MS officially added the facility in 8.1. Interesting that you suggest Linux as a third OS, I will certainly consider that if it proves impossible to get Windows 98SE to work on the new system. I have e-mailed Supermicro to see if they think that Windows 8.1 will be OK on that motherboard, I'll let you know what they come back with. Cheers, Dave.

Thanks, yes reading it that way it does sound more hopeful! Looking at the drivers offered for that board however, the only drivers offered for Windows 8/8.1 are for the LAN, there are no others listed. There are chipset drivers for Windows 7 however, and I would think it's likely that they would also work with Windows 8. If I'm going to go for this, I would rather go for Windows 8.1 than Windows 7. I think I will just e-mail Supermicro support and ask them if Windows 8.1 will work with that motherboard.

That's very interesting, in fact I am getting the blank window so presumably need the hotfix! My shdocvw.dll file is older than the one in the hotfix, but as it's a hotfix you need to request from MS and can't just download, I don't think I'll bother!

That's good to know Den! I still wonder why they would update files for IE6 installations but not for IE7 or 8, unless the updates weren't actually necessary in those browsers.

Any thoughts on this Den, or anyone else? Any opinions for or against what I'm considering would be very welcome.

Hmm, I don't think I'll bother doing that then! Presumably these later files aren't that critical for IE7 and IE8 or they would surely have been included in the updates for those browsers.

Thanks Den, good to know that Windows 98SE can run on 64bit hardware. Driver availability is another issue though of course! I've actually found a possible Supermicro motherboard that looks attractive, a X7DVL-E. It's not too different from the one I've already got, and has an impressive amount of expansion slots. It's from 2009, and therefore still has a floppy connector and serial ports (and a header for a parallel port)! It doesn't have on-board sound, which my board does, but it does have on-board graphics, which mine doesn't. It also has one IDE connector, which I can work around. The details are here. It uses an Intel 5000V chipset, which I don't know very much about, but it supports Windows XP of course. Obviously Windows 98 would be a problem, both with the chipset and the graphics, in fact even finding Windows 7/8 drivers for the ES1000 graphics looks a bit dodgy! I could of course just replace the on-board graphics with an add-in card, which I will have to use for sound anyway. My main worry is that the motherboard won't actually support Windows 7 or 8. It's not actually listed as supporting Vista in Supermicro's OS compatibility chart. The only motherboard in that series that says it's compatible with Vista is the X7DVL-L, which is far too limited on expansion slots to be any use to me. The X7DVL-E motherboard is still available here in England for a reasonable price. Any thoughts? Cheers, Dave.

Thanks Den, and sorry for the delay in replying. I must say when I looked at those links my heart did sink a bit! I really don't want to end up having two separate systems, so it looks as if I will have to make compromises, as I thought I would. That Asus motherboard looks very interesting (and is remarkably cheap!) and I do have other Asus hardware (netbooks and monitors) that I've been very pleased with, so it certainly deserves some consideration. I like the fact that it has on-board sound and graphics, which means more room for expansion cards. It doesn't seem to have any IDE interfaces (although I was pleased to see that it still has PS/2!) but I guess that can be added via an expansion card to drive my IDE hardware until I update it all to SATA. One question I still haven't been able to find a definitive answer for is whether Windows 98SE can run at all on a 64bit system. I know of course that there was never a 64bit version of 98, but is the backwards compatibility good enough to let it run at all on 64bit hardware, ignoring the driver problems for a moment?! Cheers, Dave.

Really sorry for the multiple posts guys! I was just getting SQL server errors whenever I tried to post the new topic, and tried multiple times without realising that they'd actually worked! Please remove the duplicates. EDIT: Thanks!

Hi all, I really wasn't sure where to put this thread, as it relates to Windows XP, Windows 98SE, and Windows 7/8! As XP is "piggy in the middle" here though this is where I'm starting it, mods please feel free to move it if you need to. I'm after advice on an upgrade to my system. This has been prompted by the fact that a piece of software I use all the time has just (without any warning) gone 64 bit only. My motherboard (a Supermicro X5DAE) is now over ten years old (2003) but it was very expensive so I have stuck with it. It's a dual processor Xeon server board, and has served me very well for many years now dual booting Windows 98SE and Windows XP. I'm now looking at a 64bit upgrade, and I'm wondering if what I am considering is at all possible (or sane!) Supermicro sell a 64bit equivalent of the board I have, and as I've been very pleased with my current board I'm thinking that would be the obvious route to take. What I want to do, in an ideal scenario, is to have a triple boot machine, with the Windows 98 and Windows XP that I've got, with the addition of a 64bit installation of Windows 7 or 8.1. I of course realise that driver availability will be a severe and very probably insurmountable problem with this setup. I'll probably be lucky to find any XP drivers for the new motherboard, and there certainly won't be any 98SE ones! It is an Intel based motherboard though, and I was wondering how successful I might be with generic drivers, even if there is some loss of functionality. Drivers for the graphics card will be a big problem of course, as will interfacing the rest of my hardware, which includes four devices which use IDE interfaces. Fundamentally, will my 32bit Windows XP work on a 64bit motherboard anyway? My researches seem to indicate that it will, as there is backwards compatibility, but what about Windows 98SE? Will that run (driver problems apart) on a 64bit processor and motherboard anyway? I know I can run it in a virtual machine, but I'd rather run it natively if it's at all possible. So, am I speaking of the impossible here? Of course being a computer hobbyist I really just want to do this to prove that I can, not for any practical reason! If I was being completely realistic I'd just upgrade to 64bit Windows 8.1 only and be done with it, but where would be the fun in that! Any thoughts gratefully received. Cheers, Dave.