I'm getting a uATX MSI KM2M board and Athlon 2100+ processor to try and fix (and upgrade) my daughters HP XT 993 computer. I want to try and use the HP case and components for several reasons but if that doesn't work out do I need a micro ATX case to mount the micro ATX board without drilling and modifying the case? In other words does a "regular" ATX mid tower come with mounting holes for uATX as well as regular ATX form factor?

Don't worry, an ATX case can fit a mATX mobo.

A word of warning - make sure that HP power supply isn't wired differently à la Dell! As far as I know, only Dell did that, but a power supply from any OEM PC is still suspect IMO.

I didn't think of that! I tried putting in a regular floppy drive and it was proprietary too. HP want $54!!!!! for a replacement floppy drive. I hope they didn't pull a fast one with the PS. What do you think of this case and PS if I need to get one?

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=1&submit=Go&description=N82E16811129117

How do I check the PS in the current HP case. If it looks like it hooks up correctly to the motherboard and fans etc is it all right to try or could something still be wired differently and ruin the new stuff?

Looks like a nice case/power supply. The PS is a little light at 300 watts, but probably okay if you don't put too many drives in the system.

HP power supplies tend to be very light. I think mine is only about 200watts. I imagine that the connections are porobably okay, but you may not have much power to cover the equipment....

Antec makes a good case. I don't like the door in front of the drives, though. But then, I use my CD/DVD drives quite a bit. A similar case without the door is cheaper:

ANTEC SOLUTION SERIES MODEL SLK1600 (BEIGE) w/ANTEC SMART POWER 300W P4/AMD POWER SUPPLY ATX12V - RETAIL $39 + $18 shipping at New Egg.

Most of the computers I've seen with mATX motherboards come with low powered PSUs. Like Budfred said, as long as you don't really load it up with drives, a 300 watt power supply should work just fine.

I used the same case for my wife's system. She has 2 hard drives, 2 optical drives, an Athlon 1200, a TNT2 video card, and 256 meg PC133, running windowsXP. It runs for weeks without any problems, she only reboots about once every 2 months or so. The case and power supply should do you fine.

Another thought... you could certainly use an external floppy drive if you want... They are getting to be quite a bit more common. I am not sure how they would do with doing troubleshooting and repair work though...

I went ahead and got the new case anyway as I am not sure that either PS or heat problems aren't part of the odd problems this machine has had. It's my daughters machine and I'm buying all the parts. It's partlu out of guilt. She had a running computer which was having quite a few problems but she could still do her main uses which were online gmes like backgammon. I encouraged her several times to just doa "restore" from the restore partition that comes on the HP's. The instant she tried it the system crashed and will not come back up. Even the set of restore CD's HP sent won't work and she cannot install a different OS on a different hard drive on her computer.

The oddest thing is that when I hook the hard drive from that HP up to my computer I can't even boot from a CD like w2k or Partition Magic to look at what's on there. It's like my keyboard is not connected. As soon as I as I put a differnt hard drive in it's fine. How could something on the hard drive keep the keyboard from working before you are even booted up?

It's never a good idea to use one PC's main hard drive to boot on another PC. Windows doesn't like that at all. I don't mean to rant or single you out, but we've been having a lot of people try that lately with the expected bad results.

In this case, however, it's not so much a Windows problem as a hard drive problem. It sounds like either the HP restore partition was bad or the whole hard drive gave up the ghost. The only way to check is to download the drive manufacturer's diagnostic software and run it on a bootable floppy to see what's up with that hard drive (do this on her HP with its original config if you can).

The prospects seem grim, but there's a chance you can salvage some data from that hard drive. Obviously the more powerful software you use, the better the chance! You got $800 for ERD Commander? :p

Could you elaborate a little on what you mean about not booting a hard drive on another computer. In this case I really wasn't booting I don't think) I just wanted to look at the drive with PM and see if I could delete and create partitions or run diagnostic software. I suspected the mobo was bad on my daughters and wanted to see if the hard drive was bad. I do understand that XP will often crash if it sees a different chipset but I don't understand the problems with what I attemted to do. Any info on this would be appreciated.

Operating systems usually install drivers specific to the system on which they were originally installed.

Trying to boot a drive in a different system means that it does not have the correct drivers installed to handle the different component that are in the new system, which can result in anything from a simple failure to boot, up to possible file corruption as the OS trys to do things in a different way the the installed system requires.

If you put her PC's main boot hard drive into your PC as the main boot hard drive, that's a no-no. If you simply stuck it in your PC as a slave hard drive (non-bootable with slave jumper), that's fine.

If you tried the second option (with the proper slave jumper) and your PC did not boot normally off its own main boot hard drive, then her hard drive is hosed. That means the BIOS tried to auto-detect her hard drive but couldn't do it (in which case it just gets stuck forever trying to auto-detect). Since the BIOS has to run before a PC can boot-up, that would explain why you couldn't get that far.

Is that what you tried to do?

Well I may need to get "boot up" defined more precisely. I did put it on the main IDE connection as a master but did not try to get Windows to boot. I was just trying to boot from a CD (PM or w2k)to look at the hard drive and see if it could be wiped and reformatted. The system was seeing the CD as I got the option to "Press any key to boot from CD". The keyboard however appeared to be frozen out or not recognized or something as there was no response to any of the keys. I could put another hard drive in and the keyboard worked fine whether to boot into Windows or boot from a CD.

That's what I mean. Don't use another PC's main hard drive in your PC as a master, regardless of which IDE connector it's on. Put it in your PC as a slave drive.

Considering the trouble you're having with her hard drive, I'm not saying this will fix everything, but it's never a good idea to put another main hard drive as a master in your PC. A hard drive set as a master implies "boot off this drive!" to your BIOS (even if you're really booting from another device - your BIOS will still POST with the erroneous assumption). I don't know why your keyboard would have sudden problems, but it could be related to a very confused BIOS.