Wynn said:
Is it possible to upgrade your motherboard without having to do a
clean install of XP? A friend tried doing this by doing a repair and
just gets a blue screen now. I was wondering if it was possible?
Wynn Rostek
If you upgrade motherboards, you will have to do a repair install on XP
(not a clean install).
The reason for the repair IS because of change of this major piece of
hardware.
Be sure to have your XP CD handy, and even better, if your system is XP with
Service Pack 2, then:
1) either have a slipstream copy of XP with SP2
or 2) your XP CD already contains Service Pack 2.
Following is the Repair Install scenario.
Only if you have a "full" XP CD ----
The object of this exercise is to do an in-place upgrade or an in-place
installation for purposes of "repair".
It needs to go to the same partition as before , and the same directory as
before.
Usually for example XP is on C drive and is on folder/directory \Windows
or \WINNT.
Configure your computer to start from the CD-ROM drive. You do that from the
pc BIOS setup screen. You specify CDROM as the first drive to boot from.
Insert your Windows XP CD into your CD-ROM drive, and then restart your pc.
When the "Press any key to boot from CD" message is displayed on your
screen, press a key to boot pc from the XP CD.
When you see the following message displayed on the Welcome to Setup screen,
press ENTER:
To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.
At this point an option to press R to enter the Recovery Console is
displayed. Do NOT select this option.
On the Windows XP Licensing Agreement screen, press F8 function key to agree
to it.
Make sure that your current installation of Windows XP (in your case, the
one you wish to repair) is selected in the box, and then press the R key to
repair XP.
Follow the instructions on the screen.
--
Maurice N
MVP Windows - Shell / User
Wynn:
The advice and instructions you rec'd from Maurice are excellent insofar as
they pertain to performing a Repair install after you install your new
motherboard. Let me add a few points...
1. It is possible that after your new motherboard is installed, it will boot
and a Repair install will not be necessary. If it does boot, you will, of
course, still need the necessary drivers from your motherboard's
installation CD although it's even possible that the OS will pick up at
least some of the drivers needed.
2. But the likelihood is that you *will* need to perform a Repair install as
Maurice has pointed out. If this is necessary, before performing the Repair
install, back up whatever important files that you can't afford to lose from
your HD. Better still, if you have available a disk imaging program such as
Symantec's Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image, clone the contents of your HD
to another internal or external HD should you have another drive available
to you. It's *always* prudent to back up any important/critical data before
undertaking any major operation such as a motherboard change.
3. You most likely will also have to Activate your system following the
motherboard change.
Anna
