Advice re replacing a mobo

[gbdtil1]

A mate of mine has just acquired a lovely new Asus P5Q Deluxe mobo following the recommendations of some of you good people on this forum. We have conducted many new builds in the past but have no previous experience of merely replacing a mobo - which, by the way is not a like for like swap with his previous board.

Essentially, he just wants to swap all his old bits into this build using the new mobo but I'm sure I have read somewhere in the past that he risks running all manner of corruptions unless he reformats and reinstalls the OS - basically starting from scratch approach.

What are your opinions on this. Do any of you just port over your old bits onto a new mobo or would you recommend reinstalling the OS etc?

Cheers in anticipation

 

[Duke]

Sometimes it will get into Windows fine, sometimes it won't. Depends on the chipset going from / to (something to do with the hard disk controller). If the Windows install is quite old (over a year for example) then you may as well back up now and do a clean load with the new kit.

 

[Jimmy23]

Just do whats said above back it up, but ive never had serious corruption when changing components, windows always seems to load up. Better to be safe though

 

[J.B]

I like to reformat on a major hardware change. If he has an OEM license your friend is voiding it. Also without reformating you end up with a clogged up registry and funny system behavoir in my experiance.