New build, quick question.

[ettenra]

Hi all.


I'm building a new setup for my wife, who has been gaming on the same computer for 3 years, and is running a 9600xt right now. I know. She's a trooper. Anyway.

I'm putting in a P35 Gigabyte board and 2GB of DDR2-800 along with the Allendale that overclocks so well... 2160 I think it is. Waiting on the GPU situation to pan out after 11/15 before I decide on that. My question is, will I have to reformat her OS hard drive for this new build? Is there any way to avoid it and still have a clean swap? Any info/opinions greatly appreciated!

 

[monnewbie3]

I suppose As long as your bios can find the MBR on your harddisk which takes over the boot process, and then its all confined to your drive from there, then NTLDR loads yur OS.
When i built my system I had no problem, but I've heard others have had problems.

I'd say make a seperate partition (say f:\) using partition magic or whatever you like, then just back the files up on that. Then do a fresh install on your C:\. F:\ will show up again when you boot back into your "fresh" windows install with all your info.
Worst case scenario

Hope that helps a bit.

 

[g-paw]

Agree with monnewbie3, after 3 years a clean install is a good idea and I'm of the school of thought that a clean install with a new mobo is always a good idea. Partition Magic is an excellent program and means you wouldn't have to copy all her data back although I'd suggest you back up her data on another drive, e.g., on your machine. When you do the clean install just make sure you're formatting the C drive. If your wife isn't technologically brain dead like mine, she can reinstall Windows and her programs. Of course there can be rewards if you do it for her