New M/B and CPU

[Guest]

I have decided to upgrade my PC after in use for 4 years, If I keep my old
harddrive and upgrade the rest will I be able to access all my programs
without any issues after installing new hardware?

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

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

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

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:

| I have decided to upgrade my PC after in use for 4 years, If I keep my old
| harddrive and upgrade the rest will I be able to access all my programs
| without any issues after installing new hardware?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have decided to upgrade my PC after in use for 4 years, If I keep
my old harddrive and upgrade the rest will I be able to access all my
programs without any issues after installing new hardware?

No. At the very least, you will have to do a repair installation. See "How
to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install"
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

That usually works, but worst case, the repair installation may not be
sufficient and you'll have to reinstall cleanly, losing everything on the
drive.

 

[Guest]

After reading the web pages and explanations of MS trying to lock down
windowsXP sounds great, and Illegal. I counted 37 app's not including
AV/firewall or updates that I'll also have to reinstall, MS can not restrict
my equipment or programs in a attept to lock down the use of a program to 1
machine I paid 140$ for. I shouldn't have to spend days reinstalling all
these app's, if this was a OEM machine maybe. I bought a OS from them nothing
more nothing less.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I have decided to upgrade my PC after in use for 4 years, If I keep my old
harddrive and upgrade the rest will I be able to access all my programs
without any issues after installing new hardware?

Normally, and assuming a retail license (many factory-installed OEM
installations are BIOS-locked to a specific chipset and therefore *not*
transferable to a new motherboard - check yours before starting), unless
the new motherboard is virtually identical (same chipset, same IDE
controllers, same BIOS version, etc.) to the one on which the WinXP
installation was originally performed, 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

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

The "why" is quite simple, really, and has nothing to do with
licensing issues, per se; it's a purely technical matter, at this point.
You've pulled the proverbial hardware rug out from under the OS. (If
you don't like -- or get -- the rug analogy, think of it as picking up a
Cape Cod style home and then setting it down onto a Ranch style
foundation. It just isn't going to fit.) WinXP, like Win2K before it,
is not nearly as "promiscuous" as Win9x when it comes to accepting any
old hardware configuration you throw at it. On installation it
"tailors" itself to the specific hardware found. This is one of the
reasons that the entire WinNT/2K/XP OS family is so much more stable
than the Win9x group.

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

This will also probably require re-activation, unless you have a
Volume Licensed version of WinXP Pro installed. 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

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