Restore OS after upgrade

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

I have added a new motherboard and processor to a computer and now the Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on the old hard disk is "confused". I've been told to repair the OS using the installation CD with the repair option. When I attempt that I get many messages saying "a newer whatever exsists, do you want to replace it with the original?" or something similar. Do I want to replace all these? Once before in a similar situation I lost all the service packs and drivers and without access to the network and internet it was extremely difficult to get running again. Can someone guide me about this? I would appreciate it immensely.

Ann

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Ann W wrote:
> I have added a new motherboard and processor to a computer and now the Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on the old hard disk is "confused". I've been told to repair the OS using the installation CD with the repair option. When I attempt that I get many messages saying "a newer whatever exsists, do you want to replace it with the original?" or something similar. Do I want to replace all these? Once before in a similar situation I lost all the service packs and drivers and without access to the network and internet it was extremely difficult to get running again. Can someone guide me about this? I would appreciate it immensely.
>
> Ann

This is not unexpected. Windows NT does not do well
with major hardware changes. The obvious course of
action was to do a clean install. And in preparing
to do it, it would have been good to download and
archive to CD-R all of the service packs, patches,
hotfixes, etc., that would be needed to complete the
clean re-install and bring NT up to date.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Well, I tried to reinstall NT 4.0 as a repair and then as a new install and ended up worse than before. Now when I boot up (with a boot disk) the Setup keeps trying to run and always ends in the blue screen of death. If anyone has any suggestions, please respond. The computer would not boot from the hard disk and doesn't seem to recognize it but was reading from it??? I can get to the BIOS if that would help.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Ann W wrote:
> Well, I tried to reinstall NT 4.0 as a repair and then as a new install and ended up worse than before. Now when I boot up (with a boot disk) the Setup keeps trying to run and always ends in the blue screen of death. If anyone has any suggestions, please respond. The computer would not boot from the hard disk and doesn't seem to recognize it but was reading from it??? I can get to the BIOS if that would help.

It is beyond all repair. Do a clean reinstall. If
there are no backups of important data or document
files, then do a basic, parallel install first to
retrieve them, esp. if file system is NTFS. The new
motherboard and CPU is just too different for the
system that is installed in the old hard drive.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Thank you. I suspected that would be necessary. Can you tell me how to get to the place to reformat the hard disk and what to do to be ready to do the clean reinstall? Remember that when I boot up with a boot disk the Setup program takes over and leads to the blue screen of death. There must be a way to get to the CD with the format instruction.

Ann

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Ann W wrote:
> Thank you. I suspected that would be necessary. Can you tell me how to get to the place to reformat the hard disk and what to do to be ready to do the clean reinstall? Remember that when I boot up with a boot disk the Setup program takes over and leads to the blue screen of death. There must be a way to get to the CD with the format instruction.
>
> Ann


Ever done a Windows NT installation before? There isn't
a [single] boot disk for Windows NT setup but 3 diskettes.
Alternately, the Windows NT cdrom is also bootable when the
cdrom drive is the first boot device for the computer.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

I do appreciate your responses. I can try to boot up with the NT CD. I have done a Repair from the CD before but not a new installation. I am not sure what the procedure to partition and format is but I am going to try to find out. If you can guide me there, please do. I know that the blue screen at the very bottom mentions a DEBUG program. I don't know if I need to try that first. As I said, I seem to always end up at that blue screen now.

Thanks again.

Ann