Hi, Mike.
Do you really mean a new CPU? You just dropped the Pentium or other chip
into your existing motherboard? Or did you replace the motherboard - which
probably means you also replaced the CPU, the chipset, the RAM - and all the
other components on the board including the BIOS and, maybe, a built-in
sound card. The Central Processing Unit is really just a part of the "chip"
itself, but to some users, "the CPU" means the whole computer. What
specifically did you replace?
If you just dropped in a new chip, you should not need to reinstall
anything. You might need to reset some things in the BIOS. But the sounds
and the rest of WinXP should continue to work just about as before, only
better.
If you replaced the mainboard package, yes, you will most likely need to
reinstall WinXP. When WinXP Setup runs, it detects all your hardware and
customizes your copy of WinXP to fit that. When you replace a major
component, Setup needs to run again to detect the new configuration.
There's no easy way to do that.
See Microsoft's instructions:
How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q315341
Note that this is probably a half-day project! As Microsoft said in the
Win2K version of these instructions (Q292175), "Note that the time required
to complete the following procedure is equal to the time that it takes to
reinstall the operating system." Reinstalling WinXP itself will take an
hour or two. As soon as you get your firewall and antivirus back in place
and get back onto the Internet, go to Windows Update to get SP1 (unless it's
included on your WinXP CD-ROM) and all the later hotfixes, including the one
in July that protects you from the Blaster worm. Even with broadband, it
took me an hour to download and install SP1, plus another hour to download
and install the later fixes.
Even though the in-place upgrade does not save time in reinstalling WinXP,
it should preserve all your installed applications and data - and most of
your tweaks - so it's still better than starting over if you have a lot of
programs already working. Either a clean install or a reinstall should
detect your sound hardware and install the proper drivers for it.
RC