Replacing mobo with another (same version)

[DanHonemann]

I've been wrestling with intermittent freeze-ups (hard disk light solidly lit, sometimes followed by various STOP BSODs, typically F4 or 7A) that have been exceedingly difficult to troubleshoot given their very random and infrequent occurrences and lack of any logged errors anywhere (and diagnostics always passes all HW fine). Tried swapping virtually everything but the mobo so far, as well as SW (complete wipe, re-install of Win XP, drivers, etc.) to no avail.

So now I've got a replacement mobo, CPU and RAM (the latter two of which I've already tried swapping before) from Dell and I need to undertake this task.

If I replace all of the PC Cards, etc., in the same places on the new mobo, go into BIOS on first power up to ensure identical settings as before, is Win XP going to boot okay to my C: drive, or will it barf?

I guess what I'm asking is, should I brace myself for yet another wipe and re-install of Win XP? Or can I get away with this since it is essentially the same mobo and components--just replacements of what I have now?

Thanks,
Dan

 

[Bonesdad]

Should be fine just swapping out the mobo. I had to do the same thing with my 8rda+...didn't even stutter.

 

[lenjack]

Agreed...should be no problem at all. I do hope it solves your problem, cuase if it doesn't, it means the board was not the cause.

 

[Navid]

It is possible that you MAY need to re-activate XP, which should be no problem if you have a legit retail key.

XP monitors your hardware and decides if there have been too many changes. If it crosses a threshold, it will ask you to re-activate.
One of the components that is tracked is the MAC address.

The MAC address has 3 votes while all the other components that are monitored (Master hard drive, XP partition label id, RAM size, CPU type, .......) have 1 vote each.
Changing the motherboard results in 3 negative votes (I am assuming that your network card is integrated on your motherboard). If you have changed anything else since the XP install, this additional vote will cause it to cross the threshold (more than 3 votes).

But, as I said, no problem if you have a retail license.