moving from winnie to an opty dualie -- is a full XP reinstall really necessary?

[Haphazard]

folks, i'm upgrading my winchester to a dual core (opteron 170) and was hoping to find a way to keep my current os config and not have to go through a full XP reinstall ... anybody with any experience here? ... for example, after upgrading to the appropriate bios, will:

- just dropping in the opty work? (i.e. win just detects new hw and does the right thing)
- if that doesn't work, would dropping in the opty and just reinstalling the chipset drivers be enough?
- if thats a no-go, do i use the sysprep procedure? (do i need to be concerned about the single to dual cpu hal's?)
- repair install? (that'd trash my apps and registry, right?)
- any other options?

any help here is much appreciated!

Winchester@2.5.DFI-LPNF4-UltraD(s939).x850xt.WinXPSP2.

 

[mechBgon]

I went from a winnie to an X2. WinXP Pro went "ahh, I see New Hardware. An ACPI Multiprocessor PC." One reboot later, it was dual-coring beautifully Drop in your Opteron and fire it up!

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
I went from a winnie to an X2. WinXP Pro went "ahh, I see New Hardware. An ACPI Multiprocessor PC." One reboot later, it was dual-coring beautifully Drop in your Opteron and fire it up!

Interesting.... I was just about to post this

Obviously, I don't have an Opteron system.

 

[ronnystrauss]

i didnt have to reinstall mine just had to reregister i think

 

[Haphazard]

fantastic! ... thanx guys ... in goes the opty then.

 

[mroverclocker]

Drop it like its hot!!!!!!!!!!

 

[dman]

Good How to swap boards w/o reinstalling link

Overkill for what you are doing (a cpu upgrade) but, just wanted to share anyway.

I followed the above tonight to upgrade my wife's PC from a (now ancient) intel BX board w/ Celeron 850 to a VIA based Socket A (Athlon 1700+ Overclocked to 2200+ & 166MHz FSB). [I backed up with Ghost before doing anything, because nothing worse than an angry customer who's also your wife, so, worst case I could recover back to ground 0]

Anyway, it worked like a champ. Already had XP SP2 on there, system booted up into VGA mode and default chipset drivers. Had to reboot a few times and then install the Via 4-in-1's like I would on any fresh install [Tip: Download them before swapping the hardware, then they are already on the harddrive]. Lastly installed the new Video and Sound drivers and otherwise seems to be working perfectly (just as before, but faster) without having to put the XP CD in once.

YMMV. MS and most folks (like myself) will recommend a fresh install or a repair install at the least, but, I felt like giving it a shot this way for kicks and I'm happy so far.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

cool. Didnt' know I could do that.

 

[Doctorweir]

Been there, done that, no issues... :thumbsup: