At 11:10 AM 03/06/2000 , Benjamin Hawes wrote:
>I'll try to make as much sense as I can, given my general ignorance of
>PC and Windows architecture.
>
>Last weekend, I replaced the motherboard on my Zeos Pantera Pentium
>100mHz AT tower with a DFI k6bv3 Rev. A+, AMD k6-3 400mHz with fan, and
>a stick of micron 64meg pc100 sdram. When I booted up to Windows 95, it
>said I had new hardware, and attempted to install it. On my board, I
>have an ISA Stealth 64 video cad, an ISA soundblaster 16 audio card (I
>think), and the PCI scsi card that had been factory installed
>previously on the Zeos board.
>
>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 in the same direction as the
>COM2-connected serial port, which ran my modem (and which now seemed to
>function OK). 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?).
>
>I reinstalled Windows 95 to see if that would do it, but no luck.
>I used the "restore the registry" procedure that is in the Windows 95
>manual (attrib -h -r -s etc., then copy system.da0 system.dat etc.).
>Neither of these did the trick.
>
>I wondered if I could reconfigure the CMOS to make it work, so I
>restarted and entered it, and set it to fail-safe mode. This seemed to
>work, in that it booted up Windows. But the mouse still wouldn't work.
>By this time, I was getting quite worn out, so my memories are fuzzy,
>but I think I tried to install various drivers for the mouse, with no
>success. The CDROM (Mitsumi x4) wouldn't show up, so I used the
>included driver disk, which seemed to work. Then, windows wouldn't boot
>again except in safe mode. I did it step-by-step, and it failed at the
>stage of installing drivers.
>
>Since the cards are legacy cards, could it be some kind of PnP issue?
>I know it was disabled on the Zeos. I tried to manually set the IRQ's,
>but I didn't know which ones to assign, and the only choice the CMOS
>gave me was to either leave a selected IRQ as "PnP" or "legacy ISA".
>How does it know which board I'm talking about?
>
>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. I get errors like "Error loading
>DLL-->SCSIDLL.DLL". In the Hardware profile, the mouse and the two HD
>controllers (I have two 1.5 Gig HD's) have exclamation marks next to
>them indicating they aren't working, but they are the few things that
>seem to be allright!
>
>OK gods of tech, please help me. What should I do? I am thinking of
>upgrading to Win 98, but will that help? How should I install the new
>board without causing Windows to go FUBAR? Is it too late? Should I get
>a full edition of Windows 98 SE and completely replace Windows 95, and
>therefore reinstall every app on my two disks?


I really believe your issue here is a matter of Windows95 still including
the all the drivers for your old motherboard, as well as the configuration...
then attempting to modify the existing Registry to meet the needs of
your new motherboard.  The solution with Windows95?

The best solution here is to backup all your important data, format
the hard drive, install your new motherboard and then load Windows95
fresh on the system, letting it detect your hardware.  You should have
the latest drivers for all your hardware on hand, as it will require them.
This way you have no conflicts from the old motherboard drivers and
configuration to preclude Windows95 from working properly with the
new configuration.

As far as upgrading to Windows98 and solving your problem...  it may
be your solution or it may make it worse.  *shrug*

I have found that if you have Windows95 installed and upgrade the motherboard
on a system, often this will result.  If Windows98 is the operating system
prior to the motherboard switch, Windows98 is more intuitive to the upgrade
and fewer issues will crop up.

But, at this point...  you are probably best advised to format the hard drive
and install Windows95 fresh with the new hardware installed.  The operating
system, either Windows95 or Windows98 will not be the issue in a fresh
install.

You will find complete Guides to Formatting your hard drive and installing
Windows on our web site:
    http://nospin.com/pc/faq.html

       Bob Wright
The NOSPIN Group

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