Rebuilding MySuperPC

[catmandu]

Four years ago I did my first DIY computer using the help and suggestions of this site. Served us well until this weekend. The thing just stopped booting. All fans, led's, and drives powered up, just could not get to even the BIOS screen, no beeps, nothing. Using t/s flowcharts I found online, seems it is either the mobo (Abit NF7-S) or CPU (xp2500, I think) , and I don't have spares to isolate, plus they are old and slow.

So, rather than my usual reasoned, well thought out planning, I just said "let's go to Newegg with $200" and ended up with these new items:

BIOSTAR TFORCE TA790GX 128M AM2+/AM2 AMD 790GX HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor - Retail

Patriot Viper 4GB ( 2 x 2GB ) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM


$220 bucks delivered, after rebates, but I splurged on the HDD, since media files are starting to eat up space. I believe this will work fine for us, as this is the teen's computer, and now the XBox 360 does the heavy lifting in game world. The computer does mostly online media and communication (Firefox, AIM, iTunes, etc.), with a little home theater media thrown in (connects to a 32 inch 720p screen, where we watch downloaded shows, etc.) I will re-use the Antec Sonata case w/ 380W p/s, the Samsung DVD RW, wireless keyboard and mouse.

I also have the two previous Western Digital 40G SATA hd's, the most important being the former boot drive. I would love to just plug the old boot drive in and go, but I assume there will be all sorts of driver issues. So do I just start a new Windows XP install and migrate stuff from the old drives? Or is there someway to force the old WinXP to do a generic boot via Safe Mode or something?

Any obvious gotcha's or hints on making this less troublesome?

Thanks,

Mike

[The Wise Monkey]

Welcome to the forums. :)

If you still have the original XP CD, you can do a repair of the OS which will act like a new install i.e. restore Windows back to its original state (no updates, only the Service Packs that were on the original CD, no Internet Explorer favourites etc.), but keep all of your programs and files.

To make things as smooth as possible, download as many drivers as you can beforehand and keep them nearby on a USB stick or CD, as your motherboard may not come with network drivers; it is really frustrating to need lots of drivers but not be able to connect to the internet to download them...

Good luck. :)

[catmandu]

Windows wonders never cease: Slapping it all together and letting it boot actually worked, no repair install needed!

Some issues making the new video look as good as the old, but I am slowly working through those. All in all another fine DIY experience! :D

[The Wise Monkey]

Glad it all went so smoothly.