Mobo upgrade without XP Reinstall?

Robmonster · 10 Oct 2007 at 13:25

Morning all,

I'm planning on upgrading my home PC and am after a little advice.

I'm currently running an Nforce2 based mobo (Asus A7N8X-E) with an Athlon XP 3200+ chip and AGP graphics card.

I'm going to be upgrading to an Nforce3 based mobo (Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA)with an AMD X2 6000 chip, still with an AGP card (albeit a newer one).

I'm planning on uninstalling the existing Nforce drivers and graphics drivers prior to the final shutdown, swapping the hardware and powering back on.

Can I reasonably expect XP to handle this gracefully?

I know that an XP reinstall is advisable but it would take an age to get things back configured how they currently are, not to mention all the XP updates.

Does anyone have any advice on performing this kind of hardware swap while avoiding a reinstall?

Rob

R34pz · 10 Oct 2007 at 13:32

It's totally pot luck usually, sometimes it will boot and detect everything without a hitch. A lot of the time though it will either blue screen on bootup or keep rebooting partway through loading windows. I'd personally go for a new installation, difficult I know if you haven't backed up your data.

Robmonster · 10 Oct 2007 at 13:35

I'll be backing up all the data just in case regardless, I was just hoping to save myself from a few days worth of reinstalling and tweaking.

RM

thehmsjellyfish · 10 Oct 2007 at 13:54

Best way is dude is just to reinstall XP.

mp260767 · 10 Oct 2007 at 14:58

before you try it, uninstall any chipset, gfx , sound card drivers etc.

Little_Crow · 10 Oct 2007 at 19:17

This may be too late, but as R34pz says it really is impossible to say whether a reinstall will be necessary.

I would use sysprep if it's really important to not have to reinstall programs etc, but take a back up anyway, just in case.

Here is the official Microsoft info on it, if you need any further help just post and I'll try and help.

Robmonster · 10 Oct 2007 at 20:51

Thanks for the advice everyone.

I've had quite a few people advise performing a Repainr installation of Win XP following the changeover.

I'm going to back it all up, remove any system specific drivers and devices from Device Manager and then give it a try.

First I need to order the parts....

RM

death_looms · 10 Oct 2007 at 23:02

Tried switching a mobo before; total mess. Just take a sick day/saturday and give it some love. Besides, it's nice to have your o/s fresh and new, just formatted my laptop, feels like a new machine!