BLOOM question?

[JBA]

I'm replacing my MSI MOBO PII 400 to the below combination.
Do I have to install BIOS and reinstall the OS (98SE) if I don't remove the HD (10G)?
And can you recommend RAM? I think I may go to XP if the HD can handle it.

MSI Motherboard for Intel Processors, Model 875P Neo-LSR Retail Specifications: Supported CPU:Intel® Pentium 4 (Northwood ) processor up 3.6GHz or higher speed HT Ready Chipset:Canterwood 875P - ICH5R FSB:533/800MHz
RAM Dual Channel DDR 266/333/400 max 4GB (must use 800 FSB with DDR 400)
IDE Dual Ultra DMA 100/66 Controllers up to 4 Devices
Slots:1x AGP8X(0.8v)4X(1.5v) and 5 PCI 32-bit (3.3v) Slots Ports:2xPS2,2xCOM,1xLPT,2xUSB,1xRJ45 and Audio Ports Onboard Audio:ADI S/W 5.1 channel audio 1980 AC'97 Onboard SATA:Serial ATA/ 150 controller integrated in ICH5R Onboard LAN:Intel® 8262EZ 10/100

Intel Pentium 4 / 2.6CGHz 512k socket 478 Hyper Threading Technology 800 MHz FSB - RETAIL
Specifications: CPU: 2.6GHz
Type: Pentium 4 Northwood
Cache: 512K
BUS: 800 Mhz
Socket: 478
Retail box (with Heatsink and Fan) 3-year MFG. Warranty- more

COOLMAX 550W CT-550 Aluminum Power Supply W/ 3 double ball bearing fans and Fan Speed Control also w/ 1 Tri-light LED Fan Support AMD & Intel, P4 Ready. Triple Fan Dual Ball Bearing Fans Design, long life, noiseless and fastest cooling time.
Fan Speed Control Adjustable +5V stand by 3 A, the largest current in the market High quality gold-coated fan guard & connectors Tube-tide design, tidy your wires Over voltage protection, short circuit protection on all output levels.

OS Windows 98 SE
Have 64Mb Radeon 7000 AGP card

[bloom25]

I generally do not flash the bios on the new board when building a system.  (Unless it's a brand new model with known issues.)

As a general rule, one should always reinstall the OS from scratch when switching motherboards.  (As a sidenote, with Windows 2000 and Windows XP you must reinstall the OS.)  If you put your current drive, with Windows 98 on it, into the new system it would try to detect all the new hardware and might still boot up and work when it was done.  I can't recommend this though, as it rarely results in a 100% stable system.

A 10 GB drive is kind of small, but depending on how much stuff you generally keep on your drive it may be big enough for you.  Windows XP will eat up about 1.5 GB once it's installed and updated with all needed drivers loaded and such.  That leaves you with around 8 GB to work with.

[214thCavalier]

With Win98 for years i have just gone into device manager, view devices by connection, highlight the BIOS option and delete it.
Power off computer, swap out your motherboard etc and reboot, just have your drivers etc available as it will detect them all again.
I have tried various methods over the years but this is the only one that worked flawlessly everytime.
Doing it this way i have never had duplicated devices or left overs in device  properties from the previous hardware.

[Vipermann]

Reinstall is not mandatory in WinXP when installing a new motherboard.

I totally recommend doing a format and reinstall but you don't have to in all cases.

Ex. I went from an Abit KG-7 RAID to and Abit KD-7 RAID and just for fun I decided to see what would happen if I just swapped Mobos. Everything booted just fine including the RAID array. I was a little shocked that the array was still ok but it was, as well as everything else. Only thing I had to do was reboot after XP installed the new devices on the board.

I didn't leave it like that however, so I can't attest to the long-term stability.