upgrading a piece of junk

pertinax

I'm determined to show my crapulent knowledge of computers so....

I want to upgrade my comp if possible and i wonder if I just bought a brand spanking new cpu, motherboard and memory and fixed my harddrive and cdrom and so on to it would it go as normal. what about the bios and startup and would windows start giving out and so on?
well at least im optimistic.
and naive

Gerry

If you read up the manual, and setup your hard drive and cdrom in the bios, the bios will not give you any trouble. Windows will not like the new motherboard, it will need new ide drivers installed, but these should come with your motherboard. However, it can be impossible to fully get rid of the old drivers, and this will cause major crashes, and the only way around it would be to reinstall windows. If you give a little more detail on what computer you have and what you are planning on buying, it would be handy.

SickBoy

If your using Win9x then it should be fine. If your using something like WinNT or Win2k it gets pretty ****ed off and sometimes wont even boot.

pertinax

would i need to update the bios for this lark?
anyway im using a geriatric p166 and 32 ram and im running win95 Hehe great eh? well the computer is a packard bell mass produced beige blob and the manual doesnt expect upgrades nearly as adventurous as what im thinkin of. and messing about with bios is a little over my head. id have to be careful with what id be doing there. now i was think of jumping to a whopping great pentium 3 maybe 128 megs? or else i may as well buy a new computer which isnt going to happen anytme soon

SantaHoe

Well if you're going to buy a new motherboard, you'll have a new BIOS anyway, so you probably won't need to worry about updating it.
You'll probably need to poke around in the BIOS settings to get your harddrive detected though.
Although later mobo's will have the HD setting at AUTO and just pick up your HD without you having to do anything.
I wouldn't worry about the BIOS too much though, once you have the manual, it's just like using any other program.

You should also take the form-factor of your case into account... (size and layout of mobo and case)
Many mass produced systems use a custom form factor, so you could be trying to fit an AT mobo into case that won't take it.
IMO, it'd be easier to buy a new (generic) case/tower & PSU, just to make sure there's no headaches.

---

....but don't we all know the feeling of driving to town and suddenly realizing you still have your barn boots on....or reaching over to pick up carrots at the store and having alfalfa fall out of your hair.....

Gerry

Yes, you will also need a new case. Maplin have a full tower case for about £45 - 50 .

pertinax

So if i put all the inards of my old comp "onto" my new motherboard and i reinstall windows it should accept my graphics card and sound card and modem etc...?
I just wanted to make sure that this was possible cause i have grown to loathe these store bought tin cans.
and if i got an athlon 700mhz socket A and its motherboard could slap a 1ghz socket A cpu on the same board later?

Gerry

Yep, it will be grand.

elexes

you are going to format your computer and put win 98 on it ? isent there a bug to why 95 cant use the athlon ?maby im wrong but id reccomend upgraging to win 98