Can I just “swap” motherboards?

[Frank]

Here is what I have now.
Via P4MA PRO motherboard
2 ea. 512 sticks of ram
Matrox 450 card driving 2 monitors
2 ea 80 gig SATA hard drives.
1 of the hard drives contains the operating system and programs.
The second hard drive contains only data.

The computer is operational, but sloooooo. Testing both memory sticks
indicated a memory failure. Doing the same test with a known good
memory stick produced the same failure results. The problem is
somewhere in the motherboard or memory socket, I'm not going to waste
time trying to find it.

I have a new cheap MSI motherboard, processor and memory coming in.
The new board supports SATA. My hard drives are SATA connected to a
SATA controller board on the old Motherboard.

My question is; can I simply connect the hard drives, which contain
the xp operating system to the new motherboard and go. Or do I have
to reformat and reinstall xp (along with a lot of licensed software,
each of which would require a new authorization code).

 

[Cyde Weys]

Sayeth Frank:

Here is what I have now.
Via P4MA PRO motherboard
2 ea. 512 sticks of ram
Matrox 450 card driving 2 monitors
2 ea 80 gig SATA hard drives.
1 of the hard drives contains the operating system and programs.
The second hard drive contains only data.

The computer is operational, but sloooooo. Testing both memory sticks
indicated a memory failure. Doing the same test with a known good
memory stick produced the same failure results. The problem is
somewhere in the motherboard or memory socket, I'm not going to waste
time trying to find it.

I have a new cheap MSI motherboard, processor and memory coming in.
The new board supports SATA. My hard drives are SATA connected to a
SATA controller board on the old Motherboard.

My question is; can I simply connect the hard drives, which contain
the xp operating system to the new motherboard and go. Or do I have
to reformat and reinstall xp (along with a lot of licensed software,
each of which would require a new authorization code).

Unfortunately you will have to reinstall XP. I know, it totally sucks.
I've had to do it twice, once when my mobo failed, and the other time ...
actually, the other time was also when a mobo failed. Reinstalling XP is a
pain in the butt normally, but having to do it when you totally weren't
expecting it (and thus couldn't prepare for it) absolutely sucks.

 

[philo]

Sayeth Frank:


Unfortunately you will have to reinstall XP. I know, it totally sucks.
I've had to do it twice, once when my mobo failed, and the other time ...
actually, the other time was also when a mobo failed. Reinstalling XP is
a
pain in the butt normally, but having to do it when you totally weren't
expecting it (and thus couldn't prepare for it) absolutely sucks.

Usually just a repair install will do the trick
rather than a complete new install

 

[badgolferman]

My question is; can I simply connect the hard drives, which contain
the xp operating system to the new motherboard and go. Or do I have
to reformat and reinstall xp (along with a lot of licensed software,
each of which would require a new authorization code).

You can put the new motherboard in and boot immediately from the WXP
disk. Do a repair install and then you will only have to download all
the Windows Updates.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

[Cyde Weys]

Sayeth philo:

Usually just a repair install will do the trick
rather than a complete new install

That's good to know, but unfortunately it didn't work for me, and I ended
up doing an in-place installation because I really had not prepared for a
reinstall and so I would lose a lot of data if I did a reformat-reinstall.

Of course, this happened to me twice, and my system partition is now an
absolute mess. It has whackily named user accounts from three separate
generations of installations of Windows. You have no idea how much I'm
looking forward to wiping this thing and starting over from scratch. Only
thing is, that requires a bit of work, and I'm lazy

 

[Name]

You can put the new motherboard in and boot immediately from the WXP
disk. Do a repair install and then you will only have to download all
the Windows Updates.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

That did not work for me either......Cyde is correct.

 

[ElJerid]

Here is what I have now.
Via P4MA PRO motherboard
2 ea. 512 sticks of ram
Matrox 450 card driving 2 monitors
2 ea 80 gig SATA hard drives.
1 of the hard drives contains the operating system and programs.
The second hard drive contains only data.

The computer is operational, but sloooooo. Testing both memory sticks
indicated a memory failure. Doing the same test with a known good
memory stick produced the same failure results. The problem is
somewhere in the motherboard or memory socket, I'm not going to waste
time trying to find it.

I have a new cheap MSI motherboard, processor and memory coming in.
The new board supports SATA. My hard drives are SATA connected to a
SATA controller board on the old Motherboard.

My question is; can I simply connect the hard drives, which contain
the xp operating system to the new motherboard and go. Or do I have
to reformat and reinstall xp (along with a lot of licensed software,
each of which would require a new authorization code).

When the new motherboard has the same chipset as the old one, you can just
swap the hard drives and in 99% of the cases it will work. This could also
be true for same series chipsets, like i865 and i875.
In all other cases, you could try the repair install, but there is only
(very) little chance that it works and normally you will have to reinstall
Windows and all your applications. Only the data can be re-used without
problems.

 

[Apollo]

Sayeth philo:


That's good to know, but unfortunately it didn't work for me, and
I ended
up doing an in-place installation because I really had not
prepared for a
reinstall and so I would lose a lot of data if I did a
reformat-reinstall.

Of course, this happened to me twice, and my system partition is
now an
absolute mess. It has whackily named user accounts from three
separate
generations of installations of Windows. You have no idea how
much I'm
looking forward to wiping this thing and starting over from
scratch. Only
thing is, that requires a bit of work, and I'm lazy

To the OP and Cyde

If you have a system that will boot to windows you can (on the last
boot before the mobo swap) uninstall ALL the drivers related to the
mobo then shutdown. Perform the mobo swap and then you will
probably get away without even needing to do a repair install.

A repair install will usually get you out of most problems and I've
done plenty, but a fresh install is always preferable if you've got
the time.

 

[Frank]

Thanks, I'll give the "repair" install a try first. What is the worst
that can happen? I have backups.
Frank

 

[DaveW]

To avoid nasty Registry errors and data corruption, whenever you change the
motherboard in a computer with Windows installed on the harddrive, you MUST
reformat the harddrive and do a fresh install of the OS.