WinXP -- swapping MB, Chip, RAM -- workable?

[nghtmare24]

I thought I hard heard somewhere that WinXP handle Motherboard swaps fairly good.

While I wouldn't mind rebuilding my machine, I actually just did it a few days ago when I got a new harddrive, and after reinstalling Win98SE, I went ahead and upgraded to WinXP Pro.

And I've also ordered new MB, chip and RAM.

When I swap everything out, can XP handle the change?

Win98 did it fairly poorly.

Like I said I usually rebuild in this situation, I need to change to NTFS anyway, but just wondering.

 

[AndyHui]

Although it can handle it OK, it's pretty much hit-and-miss.

You are really better off doing a full reinstall, and go straight to WinXP. Don't do an upgrade from Win98.

 

[ginfest]

Hi,
I m in the same boat, going from a P3/i815e to a P4/i850, although XP is already installed. After the swap out, should I just boot the XP CD, and do a repair reinstall XP over itself? I understand that this will preserve my programs and files? Any further tips?

 

[AndyHui]

Since there is no real significant architecture change between the i815E and the i850 chipset (apart from a few P4 specific things, they are similar chipsets), you could probably get away with just a straight change between components.

A repair installation will keep most existing settings, and will not lose any of your data or documents.

 

[ginfest]

Thank you Andy, will try a straight swap, if it screws up I'll do the repair-reinstall.
Mike G

 

[rockhard]

Doing it the MS recommended way:-

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q314/0/70.ASP
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q249/6/94.ASP

Hope this helps

AndyHui - Any chance of you putting these linkys for the above topic in your FAQ's?
Im sure plenty of people would find the info useful as i see people asking this pretty regular.

 

[AndyHui]

rockhard: I'll put something together soon.

 

[scotters]

To anser original post, it's very workable. I had to do an emergency motherboards swap on my work system Saturday--went to power on...and nothing. After checking everything, determined MB just died...

To be safe, after the swap, I booted into Safe Mode with Networking (in case drivers were needed, I could download). Safe Mode allowed XP to detect new drivers needed, installed, rebooted, and all was well. No need to run Repair.

 

[EtOH]

I think it really depends on just how drastic a change you are making.

I changed my motherboard a few weeks ago from an Asus KT266A to a Gigabyte i845 and my system required a complete reinstall, blue screen on the boot. Repair didn't help.

Then again the following stuff changed on that swap:

Chipset
Processor
Sound
USB
Network
RAID Controller

The only carry overs were the DDR and the HD/CDRW/DVD drives. Needless to say if you aren't changing EVERYTHING then you should be ok.

EtOH

 

[rockhard]

<< rockhard: I'll put something together soon >>



Great stuff. Very impressed with how the FAQ's are growing - keep up the invaluable work

'gards,

rockhard =)

 

[Dan]

I swapped out an ECS mobo for a Shuttle in my grandson's system yesterday afternoon and it was a piece of cake. In fact, the only downside for me is that I'm upgrading his hdd as well and my copy of Ghost isn't WinXP compatible.