I agree. Just finished putting in a new mobo to replace a dead one, so I didn't have the opportunity to remove everything. I had shut off my machine to install a modem, but it just wouldn't start up again. So I am then installing a new mobo with an existing operating system that I had no opportunity to clean out.  What you wind up doing is booting into safe mode a lot to remove multiples of IDE channels, monitors, cards, CD-ROMs, hard drives, and system devices.  I wound up having to gut device manager as suggested, so I could do a complete reinstall.  Windows just will not quit installing plug n play stuff.  You won't see that you have two or three primary drives and secondary drives unless you boot into safe mode. It won't work right, but device manager in Windows won't show any more than the normal stuff.  My suggestion, if at all possible, is to put in the new mobo, use the Win startup disk, reformat, and do a fresh install, but remove all your PCI or ISA cards before hand.  Disconnect your slave drive, CD-ROM's/CD-RW, and all your printers and peripherals.  Do the fresh install with only your video card & monitor, A and C drives.  A lot more work up front, but with completely fresh installs on everything else, you're likely to have the OS work right from the get, and for a longer time afterward.  It's a real chore to have to reformat after you've installed everything, and a few months down the road you can't find out why Windows no longer works right.

>Jim,
>
>After I lost the FAT on my wife's machine's HD when installing a new CPU and
>motherboard, I've since always deleted all the drivers from the Device
>Manager that I could.  I'm not sure that you really need to, but I don't
>want to pay that price again...  It does take a little time, but if you
>realize that you don't need to reboot every time Windows wants to (after the
>installation), and that the IDE drivers are always installed AFTER Windows
>wants to install modems, NIC's, sound cards, etc. and that you can cancel
>those installations until the CD is actually available, then the PNP driver
>installations go pretty smoothly.  It is up to you, but I remove everything
>with a new motherboard installation and haven't gotten burned a second time.
>
>It also works best to boot to Safe Mode to do the driver removal.  With some
>machines, you also have to start the New Hardware wizard manually after the
>install.
>>> ... Original post: Do I need to remove some system devices in Device Manager to allow
>Windows 98 to load properly the first time and config to my new motherboard
>and processor? I known I would have to remove these just before I shut down
>the last time, correct?
>
>
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