WinXP reinstallation on cpu upgrade?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jon Condra
  • Start date Start date
J

Jon Condra

I recently got a P4C800-E deluxe mobo and am currently using it with a P4
Northwood 2.26 GHz (533 FSB) cpu. Soon, I want to upgrade to a faster,
hyperthreading cpu, either a 3 GHz (800 FSB) Northwood (or a Prescott if it
comes out in a reasonable time).

I remember reading somewhere that an OS reinstallation is needed if you
upgrade to a hyperthreading cpu. Is this really necessary? If so, is there
a way to restore all or portions of the OS and/or registry from a backup to
avoid having to reinstall all my software? I just had to do a complete OS
reinstall when I upgraded to this motherboard, and I'm not looking forward
to doing it all again! I'm using WinXP Pro. Thanks.

Jon
 
Jon said:
I recently got a P4C800-E deluxe mobo and am currently using it with a P4
Northwood 2.26 GHz (533 FSB) cpu. Soon, I want to upgrade to a faster,
hyperthreading cpu, either a 3 GHz (800 FSB) Northwood (or a Prescott if it
comes out in a reasonable time).

I remember reading somewhere that an OS reinstallation is needed if you
upgrade to a hyperthreading cpu. Is this really necessary?
Click to expand...

No, it's not necessary. I did the same (P4P800, from a 2.2GHz to a 2.6
GHz CPU), and Windows XP detected "new hardware" on the first bootup -
one reboot, and everything was fine. I did not have to move one finger
to make hyperthreading work (well, I *did* have to confirm "reboot now?"
once ... and I *did* have to check that "hyperthreading" was enabled in
the motherboard bios ...)

If you are running W2K, you might have to go into device manager, open
"computer", right-click the "ACPI uniprocessor" entry there and install
the "ACPI multiprocessor" driver instead. But still no OS reinstallation
necessary.
 
You do NOT have to reinstall XP if you just upgrade to a HyperThreading CPU.
If you change motherboards, then you do have to.
 
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