New P4P800 Installation

[Don Mahony]

I has a P4T-E bios upgrade go wrong and have replaced the board with a new
P4P800, 2X 256 OCZ 3500 memory, and a 2.6C GHz P4 processor. I would like to
just plug my existing drives into the new board and start running again. My
question is do I have to do a complete Win XP install again, or will Win XP
just figure out what has happened and reconfigure itself? If some
reconfiguration is necessary can I just run the XP CD and "repair"?

Hoping to do this tonight.

Don

 

[DaveW]

If you don't want Registry errors, reformat the harddrive and do a fresh
install of XP.

 

[Dan]

No all you have to do is a repair.
Repairing and Reinstalling Windows
When all attempts to repair your system fail, you may be able to repair your
Windows XP installation using the Windows Setup program. As a last resort,
you can reinstall Windows over an existing installation and hope that the
new installation will recover enough of your old settings to allow you to
retrieve your data files.

The repair option is quick and painless and typically does not adversely
affect user settings. To exercise this option, start from the Windows CD as
if you were going to do a clean install. It's easy to become confused during
this process, because the word repair appears in two different places when
you start your computer using the Windows CD. At the Welcome To Setup
screen, do not choose the option to repair your installation using the
Recovery Console. Instead, press Enter, which starts the Windows Setup
program. After you accept the license agreement, Windows searches your
system for existing Windows installations. When you reach the screen that
lists your current Windows installation, select it from the list and press R
to start the repair process. The remainder of this procedure requires the
same steps as if you were performing a clean installation; when Setup
finishes, your system files should be refreshed and your existing data and
settings should be accessible again.

In cases of severe disk damage or registry corruption, a repair installation
will not be effective; the only alternative is to reformat the disk and
install a clean copy of Windows.

It reinstalls your OS and saves your configuration. After it is finished all
you will have to do is reinstall all of your patches including SP1.

 

[Bob Knowlden]

The minimum is probably a repair install:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

"How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation) of Windows XP"

(In brief: change the BIOS settings to boot from the CD drive. Boot from the
XP CD. Choose to install rather than going to the repair console. Under
install, choose repair rather than new.)

This will preserve most installed programs and settings, although you will
lose everything installed through Windows Update.

(I have read that it is possible to avoid this by deleting some drivers
prior to a mainboard swap, but that would require that the old system be
running.)

A complete re-install may be safest, but it's rather more work.

Good luck.

Bob Knowlden

Address may be altered to avoid spam. Replace nkbob with bobkn.