Can I change my cpu and motherboard.

[Chris R]

My motherboard is kind of old and is lagging to much. I
was woundering if anyone knew any info about Microsofts
policy towards an upgrade of this sort? If I cange my
motherboard and cpu do I have to by a new OS or can I
still use my XP Pro that I have on this machine?
Everything else will remain the same including the hard
drives. Does anyone Know about this?
Sorry I did put up my primary email address, I don't want
spam or virus from the hackers that patrol these sites.
Please leave a message on the board though, I will check
back every other day.

thanks,
Chris R.

 

[GregW]

I recently did the same thing. My old board went out and I replaced the
board and CPU and re-installed the same Windows XP on the new board that I
had on the old one. It installed fine. However, I had to re-install a lot of
the other software I had on the old system.

Have a good backup

 

[Len Segal]

Chris,

As an added note . . .

Doing as Steve suggests is the best way since you will preserve most/all the
previously installed programs and won't need to reinstall everything.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

Unless the new motherboard is virtually identical to the old one
(same chipset, same IDE controllers, same BIOS version, etc.), you'll
need to perform a repair (a.k.a. in-place upgrade) installation, at
the very least:

How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q315341

As always when undertaking such a significant change, back up any
important data before starting.

This will also require re-activation. If it's been more than 120
days since you last activated that specific Product Key, you'll most
likely be able to activate via the internet without problem. If it's
been less, you might have to make a 5 minute phone call.


Bruce Chambers

--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. -- RAH

 

[Alex Nichol]

My motherboard is kind of old and is lagging to much. I
was woundering if anyone knew any info about Microsofts
policy towards an upgrade of this sort? If I cange my
motherboard and cpu do I have to by a new OS or can I
still use my XP Pro that I have on this machine?

If it is a retail version, you can change the hardware as much as you
like, provided it is only on one set at any time. If an OEM one that is
only licensed to the original hardware, there is a grey area over how
much change you are allowed before it is seen as a different machine,
needing a new license.

For a motherboard change, using the same hard drive, you should start
off by setting up the BIOS for date and time, make sure disks are
detected, then Set the BIOS to boot CD before Hard disk.

Now boot the XP CD, start Setup (do not take 'Repair' at this stage),
then after the license agreement take 'Repair Installation'. This will
retain your existing software installations and most settings. But
Updates will have to be run again, especially SP1; and if you have
drivers that only arrived with that, like USB 2 ones, you will need to
update drivers for the devices concerned. You may find that things like
virtual memory settings and some aspects of appearance have reverted to
defaults

This should retain your activation status, though if you have never
registered you may have the setup suggest it now (don't bother). But
you have made so many changes that you need to activate again by phoning
in, which is no really big deal, but be aware of the possibility.


If you instead take the New Install, and on being asked Where hit ESC
you can delete the present partition , make a new RAW one, and start
over clean. That way you have the usual 30 days before needing to
activate, and when it comes to activation, you may find it will go
through on the net anyway - if more than 120 days since you last did it
certainly will. If not, you will have to phone a toll-free number that
will be given, to explain and swap one long number for another to check
back as you type it in