motherboard

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tim
  • Start date Start date
T

Tim

I have a computer I built and winxp pro which i bought and
installed on the computer. I now want to switch out the
motherboard and am wanting to know if I can do that without
having to wipe the harddrive, reinstalling and reactivating
winxp pro? I would like to avoid the headache of having to
go back to my dial up connection to re download all the
programs I have as well as redownload all the updates for
those programs. Is it possible? and if it is, how can I
do it?
 
Hi, Tim:

I just went through the same process of installing a completely new mb.
Unfortunately you will have to reinstall XP and it probably would be
advisable to do a clean install instead of reinstalling. If you have had XP
on your system for a period of time, it may be likely that you will not have
to call into Microsoft to get an activation code. It will probably let you
activate it after you install through the internet. Good luck.
 
HI,

I have changed many components in my computer without any
problems. If the motherboard is all you're changing(I.E.
You are still going to use the same CPU, CDROM,ETC). You
shouldn't have any problem. You MAY have to re-register
Windows though.

Stevan
 
I just changed my MoBo the other day with no problems

you should be fine without re-installing
 
Tim said:
I have a computer I built and winxp pro which i bought and
installed on the computer. I now want to switch out the
motherboard and am wanting to know if I can do that without
having to wipe the harddrive, reinstalling and reactivating
winxp pro?
Click to expand...

Put in the new board, enter its BIOS setup at power on to set date and
time, check hard disk is correctly recognised, and set to boot CD
before Hard disk, then boot the XP CD, start Setup (do not take
'Repair' at this stage), then after the license agreement take 'Repair
Installation'. This will retain your existing software installations
and most settings. But Updates will have to be run again, especially
SP1; and if you have drivers that only arrived with that, like USB 2
ones, you will need to update drivers for the devices concerned. You
may find that things like virtual memory settings and some aspects of
appearance have reverted to defaults

This should retain your activation status, though if you have never
registered you may have the setup suggest it now (don't bother). But
just in case, a good idea is first to back up the activation files,
windows\system32\wpa.dbl and wpa.bak - if it complains on activation,
restore them (they fit on a floppy) after and reboot. You may
nevertheless find you have made so many changes that you need to
activate again by phoning in, but it is worth the try. See more on his
at www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm
 
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