WinXP reinstallation on cpu upgrade?

[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

 

[Jens Baumann]

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?

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.

 

[DaveW]

You do NOT have to reinstall XP if you just upgrade to a HyperThreading CPU.
If you change motherboards, then you do have to.