At 01:10 PM 3/6/2000 , Benjamin Hawes wrote:
>Last weekend, I replaced the motherboard on my Zeos...Pentium
>100mHz with a DFI k6bv3 Rev...400mHz...and...64meg pc100 sdram.
>When I booted up to Windows 95, it said I had new hardware, and
>attempted to install it.
>
>After Windows had "found" all of the appropriate drivers and
>restarted, it would not boot into Windows, but gave me a
>"Windows protection error".
>
>I booted in Safe mode, but my Miocrosoft serial mouse would not
>work (it could not be detected). I checked the internal COM1
>connection, and it seemed to be oriented...as the COM2...serial
>port, which ran my modem.
>
>My SCSI card was no longer being read by the system (because of
>safe mode?), and I couldn't run the CDROM (also from safe mode?).
>
>To make a long story longer:
>I reinstalled the old board, which got the mouse to work and windows
>to boot, but now the registry seems totally corrupted and lots of
>essential applications not running.


Hi Benjamin

A SCSI CDROM will not work in Safe Mode because the SCSI drivers
are not loaded during Safe Mode.

If the mouse is installed on COM1, be sure that the CMOS is set
so that the serial port that the mouse is plugged into is using
IRQ4, I/O address 03F8. (The other serial port would normally be
IRQ3, I/O 02F8 unless you have an internal modem in which case
you disable the unused serial plug on the motherboard.)

If everything is set properly but Windows 95 doesn't detect the
serial mouse, you should load the DOS mouse driver file Mouse.com
from AUTOEXEC.BAT. (Alternatively, you can load the file named
mouse.sys as a device in config.sys.)

Windows 95 sometimes has trouble detecting a serial mouse, but it
will easily detect the DOS real mode driver and replace it, while
booting, with its own protected mode driver.

You would add the following line to your Autoexec.bat file:
LOAD C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MOUSE.COM

I picked this line because it is possible that the DOS mouse driver
file is already on your hard drive in the folder C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.
(It's there on my computer but I don't remember whether I put it
there myself or if it is put there by Windows 9X during installation.)
If it's not there, do a SEARCH on your system for Mouse.com. If you
find it elsewhere, you can put a copy of it in some folder, say
C:\MOUSE. But then you'd have to change the line in AUTOEXEC.BAT.
In my example, the line would become "LOAD C:\Mouse\MOUSE.COM".

If you don't have this file on your system, you can download DOS
mouse drivers from Microsoft or from the Nospin website. Try
<ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/msmouse.exe> or
<ftp://ftp.fluidlight.com/pub/nospin_files/ms_m901.zip>.
You'll need to read the enclosed readme.txt file for instructions.
You want to install the mouse driver after booting to Command
Prompt Mode from either a startup diskette or from the hard drive.

                                 ...

As for the Windows protection errors, I assume that you didn't
delete all the hardware from your old motherboard in the Windows
95 Device Manager before installing the new motherboard and letting
Windows detect the new hardware. You ended up with a mishmash of
devices from the old motherboard and devices from the new motherboard
in the Registry. There would likely be duplicates and conflicts.

When you install a new motherboard, you should first boot to Safe
Mode and remove *everything* from Device Manager and then reboot
to let Windows detect all hardware that's on the new motherboard.
Normally you would do this before booting normal Windows 95 for the
first time with the new motherboard. But you can do this even if you
have already booted regular Win95. Time spent up to this point in
detecting hardware is wasted of course.

Here are details on what to do when changing motherboards:

Go to Device Manager and remove EVERYTHING that shows up. (You
must be in Safe Mode because otherwise the system will freeze before
you finish. Also, trying it from regular Windows will not allow you to
see everything that Win95 THINKS is installed on your system.

Once this is done, power down and change the hardware...if you haven't
already done so.

Allow Win95 to boot normally and it will re-detect all of your
hardware. Allow it to reboot whenever it wants to. Do NOT say "No"
to the reboot questions thinking that you can let it detect the rest
of the hardware and then do one reboot when it's all done detecting.
Doing that could cause problems because some devices might not be
properly recognized until other devices have been fully installed.

Make sure that you have any vendor supplied diskettes or CDs handy
as you may need them when Windows asks for locations for some drivers.

                              ...

So I would suggest that you reinstall the new motherboard and follow
the above steps. I'd suggest that you empty Device Manager immediately
before you switch the motherboards. (Do this after booting to Safe
Mode.) But you can do it just the first time you boot with the new
motherboard installed.

Of course, you might check out the mouse drivers before doing this.
Also, be sure you have a bootable diskette that has CDROM driver
lines in Config.sys and Autoexec.bat so that you can do a clean
install of Windows 95 if necessary. (That means reformatting your
C: drive.) You could of course copy the Win95 directory from your
CDROM drive to your hard drive beforehand so that you can install
Windows 95 without CDROM support and DELTREE the Windows folder
instead of formatting your hard drive.

I'd setup the bootable diskette so that it has both mouse and CDROM
drivers installed. You might want to "LOADHIGH" or "DEVICEHIGH" all
drivers (including the mouse) so that you're sure that you have
enough conventional memory to run Windows Setup.

My DOS diskette has the following in Autoexec.bat:

A:\DRIVERS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:ASPICD0 /M:12 /L:Y
LOADHIGH A:\DRIVERS\MOUSE.COM

My DOS diskette has the following in Config.sys:

DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=A:\DRIVERS\HIMEM.SYS
LASTDRIVE = Z
DEVICEHIGH=A:\DRIVERS\ASPI8DOS.SYS /D /L
DEVICEHIGH=A:\DRIVERS\ASPIDISK.SYS /D
DEVICEHIGH=A:\DRIVERS\ASPIDISK.SYS /D
DEVICEHIGH=A:\DRIVERS\ASPICD.SYS /D:ASPICD0

You might copy fdisk.exe, edit.com, and format.com to
the diskette. Be sure all files mentioned in autoexec.bat
and config.sys are in the A:\DRIVERS folder.

The SCSI files are for my Adaptec 2940UW and 2940U2W
controllers. You might need different drivers.

Regards,
Bill

                         PCBUILD's List Owner's:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>