Upgrading motherboard without reinstalling win XP

[jimmyj68]

I have read a number of articles about upgrading motherboard and CPU in win XP without having to reinstall win XP and lose all of your files. There are opinions pro and con although the consensus seems to be wipe your hard drive and start out all over again.

For those on the side of doing it without a win XP reinstall (as I am leaning in that direction), there is an issue I don't believe I've seen discussed. Here it is: What level of "upgrade" is most likely to run into problems if you attempt a method that keeps your old win XP installed; is an uograde to another intel chipset and cpu, if that is what you are running now, more likely to be successful than a complete transition to a motherboard running an nvidia chipset and an AMD cpu? Will win XP totally freak out if you make such a switch?

 

[xsilver]

the only way to upgrade your mobo without having to do a reinstall is to get one that is exactly the same model
same mobo chipset is also theoretically possible

but other than that -- you're out of luck .... eg. you're not really upgrading if you're getting something similar
everything else should still be ok to upgrade, but once the mobo changes -- no good

 

[jimmyj68]

I have a print-out in front of me, downloaded from PCSTATS which claims to be the penultimate procedure for upgrading your motherboard without "breaking windows" as they term it. The key seems to be a repair install of win XP after all the hardware is changed.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: xsilver
the only way to upgrade your mobo without having to do a reinstall is to get one that is exactly the same model
same mobo chipset is also theoretically possible

but other than that -- you're out of luck .... eg. you're not really upgrading if you're getting something similar
everything else should still be ok to upgrade, but once the mobo changes -- no good

Thats not true at all. I swapped an intel chipset PIII IBM machines hard drive onto a via based AMD AXP system a couple months ago and its purring along nicely. It was sort of a b|tch to do, but if you set your hard disk controllers driver to standard pci IDE it will boot and install the missing hardware.

In most cases, a complete reinstall is recommended however.