upgrade

[timisoreanul35]

I want to upgrade the motherboard and cpu and keep my old hard drive, what is the best way to do it?I have Pentium 4 I'd like to try AMD.

 

[Astray]

Back-up any existing data on the HDD. If you want to go with AMD, a completely different architecture than Intel, you will be forced to reformat.

 

[patentman]

Originally posted by: Astray
Back-up any existing data on the HDD. If you want to go with AMD, a completely different architecture than Intel, you will be forced to reformat.

Reformat? Really? He should be able to reinstall windows without formattin and still keep his data, assuming the file system is the same.

 

[drjman]

boot from the windows XP install cd and select repair OS (the second time it asks, the first is the recovery console). You will have to run updates again but everything should be working (install all drivers, too).

 

[Double Trouble]

There's no need to reformat anything. If you upgrade to a similar chipset or cpu, you can generally just boot into the OS after the upgrade and winders will find new components and walk you through installing drivers etc.

If you're moving from intel to amd, meaning you're also changing motherboards, chipsets etc, your best bet is to either do a 'repair' of XP by booting from the XP disk and selecting repair, or to do a re-install of windows on top of your existing windows. You won't lose anything, but you'll have to reapply all the patches etc.

 

[timisoreanul35]

I don't have the XP disc , it is a Gateway ,intel 915GAG ,P4 2.8.