Will I need to RE-Install. . .

[Jason]

I am looking to buy a new Motherboard and want to know If
I will need to do a full Re-Install of Windows XP or will
I be able to plug everything in and just go

 

[Chris Lanier]

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

 

[John Dingley]

You will need to do a repair install. I've done this a couple of times
without problem and all my installations got carried over OK with the
eception of my internet dial up account which got lost/removed somehow. So
Id' make a note of you dial up connections etc so you can rebuild.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I am looking to buy a new Motherboard and want to know If
I will need to do a full Re-Install of Windows XP or will
I be able to plug everything in and just go

When you have the new board installed, power up and go straight into
BIOS setup, to set date/time, ensure hard dive is detected correctly,
and set 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 (see www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm)