change motherboard

[Guest]

I have an eMachine desktop that I has just suffered from a failed power
supply and motherboard. The hard drive is still in tact. I contacted
eMachines about replacements, and they did send me a replacement board and
power supply. However, the motherboard is different from the original. How
can I get my hard drive to work with this new motherboard without having to
do a format and losing all my data and settings? I belive you can get around
this by doing a repair installation of XP, but I think the discs I have for
this PC are simply recovery disks, not the actual XP disc. Any ideas are
appreciated! thanks.

Jeff

 

[Guest]

Setting the hd as a slave drive to another OS,distract the files probably
would
work,if another pc is available to do that.Otherwise,youre out of luck,even a
retail version of xp would'nt work with "Repair this copy" since the boards
are
diffrent.....

 

[C J.]

I have an eMachine desktop that I has just suffered from a failed power
supply and motherboard. The hard drive is still in tact. I contacted
eMachines about replacements, and they did send me a replacement board and
power supply. However, the motherboard is different from the original.
How can I get my hard drive to work with this new motherboard without
having to do a format and losing all my data and settings? I belive you
can get around this by doing a repair installation of XP, but I think the
discs I have for this PC are simply recovery disks, not the actual XP
disc. Any ideas are appreciated! thanks.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I'd recommend, getting a "full version -retail " disk of your brand of XP
(Home or Pro) and then doing a "repair install". Emachines recovery disks
are OEM, and are locked to the BIOS of the motherboard you're replacing. If
your software came pre-installed then its more than likely not going to pass
Windows activation.

See these two articles for more information:

Changing a Motherboard or Moving a Hard Drive with XP Installed
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install
http://www.michaelstevenstech.­com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

[Rock]

I have an eMachine desktop that I has just suffered from a failed power
supply and motherboard. The hard drive is still in tact. I contacted
eMachines about replacements, and they did send me a replacement board and
power supply. However, the motherboard is different from the original.
How
can I get my hard drive to work with this new motherboard without having
to
do a format and losing all my data and settings? I belive you can get
around
this by doing a repair installation of XP, but I think the discs I have
for
this PC are simply recovery disks, not the actual XP disc. Any ideas are
appreciated! thanks.

If the boards are similar it's possible it will boot from the hard drive,
but quite possibly it won't. You need an XP installation CD to do a repair
install. You could buy one of the same kind as you have, Home or Pro, and
do the repair with that.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html

With the eMachines recovery CD the restore will remove all data and programs
from the drive. So one option, if you don't have a backup of important
data, which you should always have, is to put the drive as as slave drive in
another XP computer and copy the data. Then install the old drive in the
computer with the new motherboard and use the eMachines recovery CD. If it
works, fine, if not you'll need to get a recovery CD for that motherboard
from eMachines. After that reinstall all apps from original media and
restore data from the backup.

 

[Gordon]

I have an eMachine desktop that I has just suffered from a failed power
supply and motherboard. The hard drive is still in tact. I contacted
eMachines about replacements, and they did send me a replacement board and
power supply. However, the motherboard is different from the original.
How
can I get my hard drive to work with this new motherboard without having
to
do a format and losing all my data and settings? I belive you can get
around
this by doing a repair installation of XP, but I think the discs I have
for
this PC are simply recovery disks, not the actual XP disc. Any ideas are
appreciated! thanks.

Jeff

Borrow an OEM CD from a friend and use that with your XP key to do the
repair install....it's the key that is the essential factor, not the CD...

 

[Alias]

I have an eMachine desktop that I has just suffered from a failed power
supply and motherboard. The hard drive is still in tact. I contacted
eMachines about replacements, and they did send me a replacement board and
power supply. However, the motherboard is different from the original. How
can I get my hard drive to work with this new motherboard without having to
do a format and losing all my data and settings? I belive you can get around
this by doing a repair installation of XP, but I think the discs I have for
this PC are simply recovery disks, not the actual XP disc. Any ideas are
appreciated! thanks.

Jeff

Call eMachines and get the restore disc that goes with the new
motherboard. Install it after backing up your data using another
computer and setting your hard drive to slave.

Alias