Hello everybody.

I am swapping the motherboard in my system. I've swapped motherboards under Win98SE successfully before. (with minor issues once or twice) I remove all media drivers (audio, video), followed by any chipset/mobo specific items (drivers for built in LAN, USB, and IDE controllers), and that is usually enough.

I am wondering if there is a process that needs to be followed? Any ideas what else needs to go? Like anything in "System Devices" column? (PnP BIOS extensions, motherboard resources, etc)

I would really appreciate any input by someone that has had experience in such matters.

Edited February 2, 200620 yr by Lunac

Best I can suggets is to do a clear-reinstall of drivers by wiping the ENUM branch in your registry. Open up the registry editor "regedit.exe"

and delete the branch "HKEY_Local_Machine->ENUM" then shutting down. Switch boards and then boot.

Have your driver disks ready. One thing to keep in mind is to keep your WIN98 install files on your harddisk. This will help prevent headaches due to not being able to access the cd drive while installing drivers for the IDE controllers.

Just back up your registry before-hand by going to *Start -> Run -> type 'scanregw'*

I've done a swap of boards myself only to find some problems due to IRQ's incorrectly set and some devices still installed that nolonger exist (emulated drivers for some software). Wiping the enum branch as mentioned is about the same as just deleting every entry at once in the system devices tab.

Edited February 1, 200620 yr by Chozo4

Thanks for the tip. I found this website that details several different paths to retaining Windows 98SE while swapping the motherboard. (It's a pretty detailed guide)

http://www.motherboard.windowsreinstall.com/win98me.htm

Hold it !!

If you have the same brand chipset, such as via, you dont need to do much at all.

#1 rule "dont remove plug and play-anything"

if you can use data lifeguard to copy your drive to another, THEN swap mobo's and just let it boot.

It should identify most items and lead the prompts to a copy of 98se cab files and the latest chipset driver extracted to a file somewhere

Hi kartel. No it's a different chipset. I did google data lifeguard you mentioned. Looks like an interesting application.

Hi, yes it works top notch on 98se, its found here Data Lifeguard Tools 11 for Windows

Its best to kill your net and disable your start-up group and restart when you make a copy, or use it to copy another op to a third drive, ect.

Use the drive to drive copy for this

Whats the new chipset ?

Edited February 3, 200620 yr by kartel