rec.autos.simulators

1.)  The gentleman I bought them from said that once I've installed to
new mobo, my computer will "blue screen" and I'll have to re-format my
system.  Is this true?  I've heard otherwise, but I'd like a final
answer.

2.)  The CPU I bought is the Athlon 2400XP, what the ghz speed?

Nick

The 2400XP is 2GHZ I believe or there abouts.

Not trying to make you feel badly on New Years' Eve but why on earth would
you buy this stuff at CompUSA?  :0)  I was just at CompUSA browsing and saw
the XP 2100 on SALE for $169 ($199-30 rebate).  I'll be upgrading to that
chip in a few weeks for about $88 via the web.  No reason to pay the CompUSA
premium these days.

Try www.newegg.com for upgrade and system building.  Been doing it for 10
years and newegg is the best vendor yet.

--
Joe M.

Depends on your OS, if it's an NT based OS like 2000 or WinXP, then yes,
it happens almost every time and you get the "inaccessible boot device"
error

If it's Win9x, chances are you'll be able to boot to Windows, but you
won't have access to your CD-Rom, and since you don't have access to
your CD-Rom you won't be able to install the drivers for your MoBo

The best way would be a reinstall as Schooner says, but it's not
strictly nesessary, just make sure you have the drivers for your MoBo
copied to your HD before you to the MoBo swap, you'll need the 4in1
drivers and the drivers for the UDMA100 HD controller, the latter ones
may fit on a floppy

But quite frankly, whenever I do a major system change like that I
prefer to do a clean install of the OS at the same time, saves a lot of
trouble shooting should you have problems, at least you won't have to
chase down and remove old drivers etc

Wouldn't that be a 2.0 Ghz CPU....?

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.theuspits.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

The good news is that you'll have a nice fresh system to start off with
again..

BTW -- The Athlon 2400XP runs at 2.0 Ghz  Good Luck with the new system.

Oh.....and don't use the axe when replacing the mobo.  8-)

Unless you copy the contents of the MB CD onto your HD *before* you swap
the board. I do this with the OS setup CD too. Then I don't have to fish
around for a Windows CD every time it wants a driver.

Hard drives are so cheap now...if I was you, I'd buy a new one, do a fresh
install on it, and use your current one as slave. This way you'll have a
system that runs properly, and you'll be able to recuparate all your
important data.

Good luck.

Thanks for all your input and thanks again in advance,

Nick

To make it easier, write down a list of programs you want on the new
harddrive. Move all important files that you can't download to some CDRWs.
Go to your mobo manufacturer's webstie, get the latest drivers. Same with
videocard. Burn those onto a CDR too. Format the drive, boot from the
windows disk. Load on windows. Load all the new drivers you downloaded.
Download and install all latest versions of the programs you use. Install
your games, copy over your save-games and mods, etc. Then you're rockin' it!
:)

if you got the cash, what Robert suggested (getting two drives) is a cool
idea. You install the OS and all that on one drive, and games and important
data on the other. Then all you have to do is format the OS drive. OR, do
what I said above, and before you load on the operating system, create a
drive partition to do the exact same thing, but for free :)

Nice Floydian name btw..

Mike
http://mikebeauchamp.com

As Joe B said, you'll find stuff like this on the web, but why you'd
need to update the BIOS is beyond me, the old saying, if it's not broke,
don't fix it applies here

I used to check the ASUS site for BIOS updates every month when I was
doing the OC thing, looking for every last performance bit, even loaded
beta versions of the latest BIOS and had something like 10 BIOS versions
for my MoBo sitting on my HD so that I could go back to previous
versions if someone found a new performance setting that only gave
increased performance on that particular version....talk about being
obsessed eh

These days I don't touch the BIOS unless I have a specific problem, I
still check the ASUS site every so often and look at what the latest
BIOS version fixes, if it fixes something that may be related to the way
I use my PC's, I may update the BIOS as a pre emptive strike, but that
hasn't happened in the past year, in fact, over the past 2 years I
believe I've updated the BIOS on either of my PC's 3 times, 2 of those
was in an attempt to make the XP2200+ work on an older MoBo and the last
one was to fix an intermittent BSOD

BIOS updates, unlike driver updates, are strictly bug fixing or to
introduce support for a larger HD or the latest CPU or something like
that, for the average user there's little to gain by updating the BIOS

Also, a slight word of warning, updating the BIOS is one of the few
areas where you can actually do some real harm to your PC without
dropping it or using solid objects to beat it up, it is possible to
update the BIOS on your MoBo with one that doesn't actually suit your
MoBo.....and even if you do manage to get hold of the right BIOS update,
sometimes the update still fails

Updating the BIOS is something I only do if I believe it will fix a
problem or it introduces an enhancement I really need, you can check for
yourself here....

http://www.ecsusa.com/downloads/k7s5a.html

I'm not 100% sure this is the correct place to DL a BIOS for your MoBo
revision, please make sure before you use it, you'll notice that support
for your CPU was added back in 09/09, but if the BIOS version on the
MoBo doesn't support the CPU you have, it's unlikely it will boot up at
all

I would just go ahead and do the swap if I were you, just a word of
advice, if you haven't worked on AMD CPU's before, it's absolutely
*VITAL* that the heatsink and fan be correctly installed, unlike Intel
CPU's the AMD's will self destruct without proper cooling

Install the CPU and HS/Fan before you install the MoBo in the case, that
way its easier to see what you are doing and you can check if the HS is
actually in contact with the CPU, if you look at the bottom of the
heatsink you'll notice that it's not perfectly flat and it's actually
possible to install it the wrong way around, I'm only mentioning this
because I've seen people install the HS the wrong way around with
predictable results, happens more often than you might think and with
people who ought to know better :-)

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.theuspits.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

--
Joe M.

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.theuspits.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

It's possible to program the required bios version into the EEPROM using a
device programmer... i.e. seperately, not via the MB itself. Once the EEPROM
is plugged backed into the board it should be ready to accept the new CPU.

Jan.
=---

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.theuspits.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--