HW Upgrade

[Alberto]

I have in mind to upgrade my HW.
I want to change Motherboard, CP ed RAM
To do this I'll backup my whole system with Ghost or sometingh like that,
the question is : is it possible to restore the system on a different HW
(HDD are alwars the same) or I must re-install WinXP ?

Thanks

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi Alberto,

You can restore it, but that many harware changes will require a repair
installation and probably reactivation. There is no real reason to use
anything like ghost unless you are swapping hard drives as well. Follow
these steps to do a repair install which should preserve your data,
settings, and programs:

1. Insert the Windows XP CD into your computer's CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM
drive.
2. Restart your computer. If you have to, change the BIOS settings to start
from
the CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM drive, and then restart your computer again.
3. At the "Welcome to Setup" page, press ENTER.
4. Press F8 to accept the Licensing Agreement.
5. Use the arrow keys to select the installation of Windows XP that you want
to
repair, and then press R to start the automatic repair process.
6. When Setup is completed, activate Windows XP.

Note that you will need your Product Key for this procedure, so have it
handy before you begin.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have in mind to upgrade my HW.
I want to change Motherboard, CP ed RAM
To do this I'll backup my whole system with Ghost or sometingh like that,
the question is : is it possible to restore the system on a different HW
(HDD are alwars the same) or I must re-install WinXP ?

There is no need to Ghost (other than as a 'just in case' backup), but
you should start off on the new hardware with a 'repair' install. Put
it together, using the old HD as boot device, enter BIOS setup at boot,
so as to set date/time etc, and while there, Set the BIOS to boot CD
before Hard disk, then 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;
It is important to activate the basic XP Firewall before you ever
connect to the net to get the patches, so as to be protected against
things like the BLAST worm.

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 may nevertheless find you have made so many changes that you need to
activate again by phoning in, but it is worth the try.