All I want is reassurance… I have had NO reply from Abit manufactures. What I am about to do is replace my motherboard (Abit AI7 - 865PE FSB 800 DDDR400 SATA RAID AGP 8X uGuru 6CH Audio SPDif 1394) together with a new Pentium (2.8GHz (PG-800FSB) HT *Retail* Intel Pentium® 4 CPU 512k Cache) I have already upgraded my power supply from 250W to 500W. My computer at the moment has only a Pentium 2 450MHz Packard Bell Platinum 2030Windows ’98 256 DDR Two drives C:10GB D:100GB Sound card: Sound Blaster Live Digital 5.1 Video card: NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440-SE Video capture card for Pinnacle Editing 1394/Firewire Modem Card: MDP3858V-E SO what I would like to know is this: I only know a little about computers so can you tell me when I insert this new board and install the above 4 cards AND THE NEW Pentium 4, what will happen when I switch on? What will I see on the screen and will I have to do anything? Is there anything I have missed out you would like to know about my machine? I am going to upgrade to Windows XP at a later date. I am hoping that nothing will change so drastically that I will be left without a working machine! I hope things will run a lot smoother and faster! Please can you help and put my mind at rest? Many thanks

okay, assuming everything is put together right and working then your PC will boot up and all you will have to do is install any drivers that are needed. That said, when fitting a new motherboard i personally prefer to wipe and start fresh, some of our customers don't like that idea so what I do then is on the first boot start in safe mode. I then remove every driver I can and restart. Generally everything goes ok and it's just a case of reloading the drivers, in some cases the OS throws a tizzy and I have to over install 98 which is no biggy. I have found that not going through this process can cause issues further down the line. hope this helps

This previous thread may help: http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/153785.html

When you install the motherboard, be absolutely sure that every mounting stud lines up with a hole in the motherboard. If you do not make any mistakes the system should boot up normally. Except the drivers for the new motherboard will have to be loaded.