Hi Les,

Well, if your friend had the foresight to have his OS on a seperate partition on his HD, he just might be able to swap the drive onto the new MB and get it to boot. After this he could do a re-install of the OS and keep his data files. However, what usually happens is that there are so many problems with conflicting drivers, that the HD must be formatted, followed by a fresh install of Windows. If the OS is on a seperate partition, he would just format that partition.

The easiest way is to get a new, second HD and install it as 'Master' and partition it into 3 partitions: C: = 10gig for the OS and program files; D: = 1gig for the XP swap file; and E: = whatever is left for the storage files. Now you would install the old drive as a 'Slave' and simply transfer the desired files to the E: partition. After a partition and format of the old drive, it becomes F: drive.

One cavet ...
if you are replaceing with the exact same hardware (even the bios has to some degree have to match) then the reboot is no problem . It happened to me
I was updating the Bios on one of my Mobos and the floppy drive crapped out on me in the middle of the update .... I eventually got a new bios from a company that makes new bios's for
"dead computers" ,.. the best thing that will happen is that it will boot with out that annoying balloon saying you need to activate windows again. the worst ( if you look at it that way ... ) is that you have to do a reinstall of the os and retweak..
good fortune
CJ

thanks lensman and cj
i connected his hd to my system as a slave....all he needed to save was some family photos..so i put them to disc for him then i formated his hd.............he bought himself an asus a7v8x-x mother board ive heard there not bad boards......but his vga card is 4x...while his mother board is 8x only lol...so now he needs a vga card too,,,,,,,,,if he had a power surge could his psu be knackerd...as ive tested his memory and that is fine,,,ive not tested his board...cpu ...vga or sound card yet.....could all these be knackerd.....oh yes and he needs a new case too as his new mother board is about 3" bigger than his old one lol and wont fit his old atx case lol ...he was pleased (not)lol
take care all
and thanks for any help
les

When you get a power spike, anything could be damaged Les. About all you can do is slap her together and try it.

Maybe Im not reading this right... but I do belive that The ASUS CAN take a 8x or 4x vga card .. the BIOS settings should allow you to do that I have three MoBos that are 8x ready for money reasons I went to the 4x cards ... I have had no problem .... then again Im not a gamer either so the performance hit is neglegible to me ..
muchPEACE
CJ

You are correct CJ. If the board will take 8x AGP it will also take 4x AGP cards. The performance hit is neglegible to gamers as well.

thanks lensman and you cj
as far as i know the board only takes 8x agp....4x is not mentioned in the manual at all
this is a wierd thing
ive just bought a radeon 9800 pro 128ddr the thing is playing games does'nt seem any different than it did with my old prophet 4500
speaking of prophet 4500s i only had mine about 12 months and the thing took the knock....ive tried getting intouch with hercules but there is no contact email address...if any of you have any ideas how i can get intouch with them i would be most greatfull (not in a sexual way lol)
take care
les

Try one of the emails on this page Les - http://us.hercules.com/mediaroom/contact/index.php3

cheers for that info lensman m8 much apritiated
now another problem my motor bike has broke down any ideas lol............just kidding lol.....bikes are my field i can sort it
take care m8
les

Hahaha...take care Les.

Al

How ca I get the multiplier higher then 12.5 on my GA-7VAXP board !
I got with my XP 1800+ (Throughbred B, 11.5 x 133 multiplier unlocked) untill XP 2600+ (12.5 x 166) and it is at 40 C in Full Load CPU ! Seems to be place of much higher frequency but i'm stuck by the motherboard setting for the multiplier !

You must have some serious cooling going on in your machine! How many fans do you have running? I get 45 at idle, and 50 celsius at full load. I have an athlon xp 2100 with a volcano 11 heatsink on top. Plus my basement is bone chilling.

Check your on-board sensors. Mine were off by around 5 degrees.

You should get higher multipliers by commecting #5 on the L3 bridge of the chip. For a handy guide, see http://www.ocinside.de/go_e.html?/html/workshop/socketa/tbred_painting.html

My GA-7VAXP Ultra system works fine with Kingston PC2100 memory but will not work with PC2700 memory. I replaced the PC2700 with memory from another manufacturer and still have the same problem.

I tried to upgrade the BIOS and but that did not help either.

Anyone have any ideas for aother things to look at?

I would check your FSB switch on the MB and make sure it is on 'Auto', as well as the multiplier switch block. Also, make sure you have loaded the 'Optimized Defaults' in the bios.

I have the GA-7VAXP and a 2600+.

I followed the link Lensman put up just to mess around with some values, see what multipliers give what.

Now, my computer's default is 12.5 multiplier x 166 FSB which gives 2075MHz. The site says this is a 2500+. Is this normal?

Windows doesn't even round off properly, it says i'm running 2.09Ghz.
Just wondering if anybody can clear these things up with me, thanks.

I have a GA-7VAXP Ultra motherboard using 2 x 256Mb PC2700 DDR (unsure of make). Problem is the bios (and W98SE) only recognises one of the sticks. I have changed them around and both work ok singly, but with 2 sticks only one is recognised.
If I take the sticks out and replace them again, the bios sees both. Switch off and back on next day and only 1 is showing !!!

Had a few random crashes and pc not wanting to switch off properly, maybe due to the above?

I have read about advance bios settings, but do not understand them. Also seen about dual channel, but cannot see that on the bios. Would upgrading the bios help?

Any advice welcome
Thanks
Graham

Try running MemTest (http://hcidesign.com/memtest/download.html) on your memory, one stick at a time, to see if you have a defective stick.

This MB does not crach unless the memory timings are not set right !
Check the Advanced Menu in Bios by presasing CTRL+F1 !
There you'll find the Memory Timings Advanced !
Good luck !

many of you may already know this, but this board rocks! no matter what i throw at it it hasn't crashed at all. i'm impressed by gigabyte. i can leave my machine on for days or weeks and performance doesn't drop. what do you guys (and gals) think?