Kind of a weird question, but......

[Cs]

here it goes. I honestly have no idea if this would work, so I will ask here.

I have an old (well, 1.5 years ) Pentium 4 system. I had a 6600 GT in it, and a 160 GB SATA HDD.

While I was away on vacation, apparently the mobo and CPU was damaged by some lightning. I have no intention of ordering a new P4 CPU and mobo, so I have decided to build a new system.



>>>> I plan on building a Core 2 Duo system. Being that SATA HDDs are used in C2D, would it be possible for me to build the Core 2 Duo system with my current 160 GB HDD? Of course, I realize I would have to install optical drive/GPU software later, that is, if it would even boot up. Would it? Would I be able to put that 160 GB SATA HDD into my new C2D system and expect it to boot up properly? I don't think it would, but I thought I might as well ask here first.

Thanks.

 

[tiger102]

i think it would boot up, just its going to be a bit slow at the beginning since the hardware changed, but i still think you can access windows through safe mode.

 

[pscowboy]

99% NO! Way too much hardware change.

After you put everything together - DO NOT TRY TO BOOT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You try a Repair install and hope that XP can upgrade your hardware changes. Pop in your cd until you get to the first Repair screen. DO NOT PRESS R HERE! Hit Enter, whereupon you will get to another screen offering to repair an existing Windows installation. Now you go for the repair. Xp will overwrite itself and hopefully boot up.

If it doesn't work, then you do a fresh install.

 

[PCcashCow]

99% NO! Way too much hardware change.

After you put everything together - DO NOT TRY TO BOOT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You try a Repair install and hope that XP can upgrade your hardware changes. Pop in your cd until you get to the first Repair screen. DO NOT PRESS R HERE! Hit Enter, whereupon you will get to another screen offering to repair an existing Windows installation. Now you go for the repair. Xp will overwrite itself and hopefully boot up.

If it doesn't work, then you do a fresh install.

Repairs and Safe Mode work a higher percentage of the time. Just be clever how you uninstall your drivers. You basically want to unregister all the DLLs and then boot up, a Repair is basically doing this. Don't be discouraged on this. IMO, you probably on want the data on that drive correct? Since you upgrading I would get yourself a nice raptor and do a fresh install. Good Luck!

 

[eightender]

Just reformat and reinstall. The amount of time and energy you spend trying to clean everything up (and potentially not getting everything anyways) you would be far better off just reinstalling.

Besides, then you are dealing with a nice fresh clean install, and not one that has had whatever else done to it over the years (virus, spyware, dirty registry etc. etc. etc.)

 

[avarice]

Just to be the devils advocate - it may be that after the lightning strike damaged more than your CPU and MB. Your entire system may be fried - including your video, memory and hard drives.

I would suggest that you test out these components in another working computer - to see if the video card works or the hard drive can be addressed (as a slave drive - not as a boot).

Once you have done this, then you will have a better understanding of what needs to be replaced. I am saying this just so that you don't bungle around not knowing exactly what the damage is before you try to fix it.


In any event - since you have a current backup ready and available - you don't have to worry about your programs or files. You do have a current backup - right?


Good luck.

 

[pscowboy]

A current backup isn't going to help him restore to a new rig, unless it's comprised of all dynamic data. We don't know.

We have to try to get that 160g stable enough to transfer stuff off.

After that, he can cleanse the partition with fdisk and do a fresh XP.