New motherboard, do i have to format?

Yes, it does work that way...However, I must caution you that the system will run better if you do a fresh install. Windows XP is good at re-detecting all your hardware...but there are some minor anamolies that could come back and bite you later. When you do a fresh install...you get a system that was put together with all the things being done specifically for that board. I just got done upgrading from the Intel 850 chipset (RDRAM) to the 875 chopset (DDR400)...and gave just this idea a try. It was OK...but I nuked the system anyway and started from scratch...all is well.

Bob

Not always but a great idead to do so. The mobo drivers would have to be dumped from the system. Most of the time windows would get hung on with either the agp.sys or mup.sys script. Even if you uninstall the mobo drivers before replacing mobo, the essensce of the old drivers will remian and could cause odd system crashes and definate system performance drop. Most of the time you just have to reinstall the OS but I always like

FDISK FORMAT REINSTALL!!! DO-DA! DO-DA!

Barton 2500+ @ 2200mhz (10x220 vcore @ 1.8)
Asus A7N8X Dlx 440 FSB
1gb Geil GD pc3500 Dual Channel (2-3-3-6)
Segata 80gb SATA 8.5ms seek
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro(420/720)

Any time you install a new hardware device into a computer system it would be advisable to install a fresh OS to support the new hardware. The very feeble way Windows has been designed is the problem.

Microsoft has never provided a real way to add or remove system drivers that does not completely ruin the operating system.

I as an individual can and have removed motherboard drivers from the hardware device drivers list then installed new hardware device drivers for a new motherboard. It is tedious and mostly a waste of time.

Anyone that really knows how an OS functions knows that removing system drivers and reinstalling new ones into an old existing OS is never going to fly for very long and even with no outward problems after the fact the performance of an operating system patched together like that is not going to be the best.

Lots of guys will say they have done exactly that patched system device drivers into their hard drive to run new Graphics cards or new motherboard upgrades.

Those are the people that like to gut their computer systems and think they are supposed to work that crappie. Computer users that acutely know what they are doing simply re-install a Fresh OS and have been around computers for so many years that installing a fresh OS is a no brainier and takes only as long as the speed of the current computer they are running.

I have never considered a Computer hard drive as a storage device they are simply a hardware device that saves software in a configuration that I can access and use it until the OS becomes to corrupted to continue to use.
Proper software backup to a CD-ROM drive is the only effective form of low cost storage available to us at this time that we can recover information from at a later date perhaps years later.

Back up your important system data to a CD-Rom and verify that it is virus free then mark on it in a black sharpie marker what it is and the date. 5 Years from now when you load up that download of 30 hits of the Rolling Stones send me an email and tell me if you are still using the same hard drive let alone the same OS you had installed when you made the CD.

Barton 3200+ 400MHz
A7N8X Deluxe
Liquid
2x512 Crucial DDR 400 PC3200
GeForce FX5900
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus9@80Gig
SONY CD 52x
SONY RW 52x/24x/52x
SONY DVD 16x/40x