BUT, i've never really gotten a real answer.

When you are switching motherboards out of a system using the same hard drive with like Windows installed. Is there a better way then formatting? Or can you just switch and all the drivers are installed and all is well? I know I tried that serveral years ago and ended up having to re-format.

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

It works okay with Windows 98 and ME, but you need to go into the Device Manager while in Safe Mode, delete all the devices (Every last one), and reboot to have Windows redetect them all.

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

That's it, that easy? What about in Win2k?

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

Win2k, same thing or you can use the orginal software to
update/install your hardware and software.

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Serious Soldier

One real issue can still exist by just removing the extra devices in Safe Mode. The registry controls all aspects of Device manager. Sometimes devices still exist in the registry when they are removed from the Device Manager.

If you do not want to format the system (Strongly suggested) then I would boot into Safe Mode and remove all of the devices that you possible can. Then, check the registry under HK Local Machine, System, CurrentControlSet, Services, Class. You will need to click on the + and then you will find one or more folders listed as 0000, 0001, 0002 and such. Each device has a separte listing, you will figure it out. Anyway, remove all of the devices and exit Regedit.

Now, delete the folder C:\Windows\INF\Other folder. Delete the two files, Drvdata.bin and Drvidx.bin. These two files are what is created when you see Windows saying "Building driver information database". Clear the recycle bin, reboot and hold on.

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AMD Athlon 1.4 / 266
Lian-Li PC70 (DesignComp) Heavily Modified.
Swiftech 462A Rev1 with Delta 80
Epox 8K7A+ Mainboard
512 MB Mushkin DDR PC2100
Enermax 550W PSU
Visiontek GeForce 3 with Blue Orb and RAM Sinks
Sound Blaster Live Platinum 5.1
Kenwood TrueX 72X CDROM
TDK 8/4/32 CDRW
IBM DeskStar 60.0gig 7200 RPM
Viewsonic PF790 19"

That's exactly what I did when my KA7 died, and I had to revert back to my Cyrix board (slooooow). Then, I did the same again when I got my new Athlon mobo. I only reformatted it recently due to the fact that I had a new HD

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paul@pleaseohpleasedontspamme.slcentral.com
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems -- P. Erdos