KX7-333R What Next?

mac · Jul 8, 2003

Hi All, I would like to get some advice/suggestions on a placement motherboard for my Abit KX7-333R It doesn't have to be the latest or greatest but I would like to avoid the mistake I have made with my last two boards namely low revision numbers (the KX7 is ver: 1.01). The two boards I have been considering are the KD7-G or the NF7-S Version 2.0. I would like to keep my present processor (Athlon XP 1800+) and memory (Crucial 256mb PC2700).

Right now I'm duel booting Win98/WinXP Home and I have had it set up as a Raid "0" but not at the present time.

Any thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated.

Sean (3) · Jul 8, 2003

"Mac" wrote:

Hi All, I would like to get some advice/suggestions on a placement motherboard for my Abit KX7-333R It doesn't have to be the latest or greatest but I would like to avoid the mistake I have made with my last two boards namely low revision numbers (the KX7 is ver: 1.01). The two boards I have been considering are the KD7-G or the NF7-S Version 2.0. I would like to keep my present processor (Athlon XP 1800+) and memory (Crucial 256mb PC2700).

Right now I'm duel booting Win98/WinXP Home and I have had it set up as a Raid "0" but not at the present time.

Any thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated.
...

I've done a lot of research into the two boards, and NF7-S v2.0 keeps on coming out on top.

Sheldon Roger · Jul 8, 2003

Mac wrote:

Hi All, I would like to get some advice/suggestions on a placement motherboard for my Abit KX7-333R It doesn't have to be the latest or greatest but I would like to avoid the mistake I have made with my last two boards namely low revision numbers (the KX7 is ver: 1.01). The two boards I have been considering are the KD7-G or the NF7-S Version 2.0. I would like to keep my present processor (Athlon XP 1800+) and memory (Crucial 256mb PC2700).

Right now I'm duel booting Win98/WinXP Home and I have had it set up as a Raid "0" but not at the present time.

Any thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated.

Am very pleased with a move from the KX7 to the NF7-S. Only had two glitches neither the fault of the MB. Running a Raid 0 with the parallel adapters on two Maxtor Diamond Plus 8 drives.

1. One of the Serillel adapters was faulty. Replaced it with a Highpoint adapter which fits more securely because of a lug which fits in the raid receptacle.
2. Can't run my tape drive with the Nvidia IDE controller driver and reverted to the Win XP driver.

Sheldon Roger · Jul 8, 2003

Mac wrote:

Hi All, I would like to get some advice/suggestions on a placement motherboard for my Abit KX7-333R It doesn't have to be the latest or greatest but I would like to avoid the mistake I have made with my last two boards namely low revision numbers (the KX7 is ver: 1.01). The two boards I have been considering are the KD7-G or the NF7-S Version 2.0. I would like to keep my present processor (Athlon XP 1800+) and memory (Crucial 256mb PC2700).

Right now I'm duel booting Win98/WinXP Home and I have had it set up as a Raid "0" but not at the present time.

Any thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated.

Woops-error--
should read "....notch on the HD IDE receptacle."

- HAL9000 · Jul 9, 2003

Keep what you got. Keeping the cpu and memory is a prescription for no performance change.

Forrest

Motherboard Help By HAL web site:
http://home.attbi.com/~hal-9000/

On Tue, 8 Jul 2003 11:51:25 -0400, Mac
wrote:

< snip >

Any thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated.

mac · Jul 9, 2003

In article ,
says...

Hi Sheldon, do you have the 2.0 version?, and do you know if 2.0 is the latest version?. Looking at Googlegear and Mwave web sites none of them appear to mention what the version number of the boards they are selling,I suppose I will have to give them a call to get that information. One more thought, were you running WinXP when you changed boards?. When I changed from my Abit KT7 to the Abit KX7-333 Win98 took it real well, but I had to reinstall WinXP.

Thanks for your comments.

Mac wrote:
Hi All, I would like to get some advice/suggestions on a placement motherboard for my Abit KX7-333R It doesn't have to be the latest or greatest but I would like to avoid the mistake I have made with my last two boards namely low revision numbers (the KX7 is ver: 1.01). The two boards I have been considering are the KD7-G or the NF7-S Version 2.0. I would like to keep my present processor (Athlon XP 1800+) and memory (Crucial 256mb PC2700).

Right now I'm duel booting Win98/WinXP Home and I have had it set up as a Raid "0" but not at the present time.

...

Mac
----------------------
To email remove "NO@SPAM"

Sheldon Roger · Jul 9, 2003

I'm using Win XP HE and have ver. 2 of the NF7-S. I purchased the board from excaliburpc.com and they list the board as ver. 2. As you know any MB change with different chipsets is not always smooth. One method in order to save your present XP setup is to try a repair installation from the CD which may work if you are using the on board IDE controllers. I have used this method with a MB change and it may work.

The other method is what I used. I have an external USB drive and I copied all the contents of my hard drives to the external drive using NTbackup. I then did a clean install of Win XP to the new motherboard. After this was running smoothly I copied all of the data and files to the destination computer. This method was documented in KSKB 314070 which has since been removed from the KB. One of the notations in this article states that "...NTbackup can handle differnces in hardware configuration information between computers and maintain critical registry entries that are unique the computer to which you are migrating information." More info from this KB article ...."if the computer doesn't boot after the destination computer install then run a repair installation from the CD." I was able to save all of my programs and data and had no problems with hardware other than having to reinstall a modem and as I mentioned before removing the Nvidia IDE drivers. I did the transfer using the HD's on the IDE controller and then "Ghosted" the images, setup the SATA raid (with parallel adapters)and copied the Ghost images to the hard drives.

Believe that most would suggest doing clean install and then reinstalling all your programs and data because the system using these methods never runs well, but this has not been my experience

Mac wrote:

In article ,
says...

Hi Sheldon, do you have the 2.0 version?, and do you know if 2.0 is the latest version?. Looking at Googlegear and Mwave web sites none of them appear to mention what the version number of the boards they are selling,I suppose I will have to give them a call to get that information. One more thought, were you running WinXP when you changed boards?. When I changed from my Abit KT7 to the Abit KX7-333 Win98 took it real well, but I had to reinstall WinXP.

Thanks for your comments.
...

mac · Jul 9, 2003

In article ,
says...

Thanks for information, especially for the excaliberpc.com those people really seem to know what they are doing and at a good price. Both the places I mention could not give me the revision or bios numbers.

I have Back Up My PC, Norton Ghost, Drive Image and have used the WinXP Files And Settings transfer wizard to backup, so I will order the board tomorrow.

Thanks again for your help, I will post a follow up and let you know how it went.

Mac

I'm using Win XP HE and have ver. 2 of the NF7-S. I purchased the board from excaliburpc.com and they list the board as ver. 2. As you know any MB change with different chipsets is not always smooth. One method in order to save your present XP setup is to try a repair installation from the CD which may work if you are using the on board IDE controllers. I have used this method with a MB change and it may work.

The other method is what I used. I have an external USB drive and I copied all the contents of my hard drives to the external drive using NTbackup. I then did a clean install of Win XP to the new motherboard. After this was running smoothly I copied all of the data and files to ...