Operating System question - Upgade

I must say that you will need to reinstall windows because too many important changes has been done.

The good news is you will have a clean Windows!  

The bad news is I would strongly recommand you to buy a new HD so you can install Windows on it. It depend on how much good stuff is on your current drive and how big.

You can use the transfer in Windows to move your stuff but I would manually copy them so you do not bring junk (or only specific items).

Note that you might not be able to reactivate your Windows and need to call M$ (should not happen).

You should be able to, but without reformating your computer you wont benifit nearly as much from the upgrade.

Buy a $49 Western Digital WD1600AAJS 160gb 7200rpm HD and install fresh windows on it. And keep second HD to pull the data you want/need off of.

If you had an OEM version of windows xp you might have trouble switching it over because changing MB violates the terms of service...

Yes, you can move the harddrive over once you've prepared it for the move. The first thing you need to do is uninstall all the drivers for the old motherboard. Sound, lan, that kind of thing. (it will ask you to reboot after deleting the first one, tell it no and keep going. Once that is done, change the IDE driver from whatever is now to windows default. (or something like that.) This will allow you to load windows once the drive moves over. At this point its safe to shut down and move everything over.

Once you move everything over, you still aren't done. This is because your windows is still setup for a single core system. In the hardware manager under the computer tab, you need to change the "ACPI uniprocessor" to "ACPI multipressor" (right click, update driver, no connect, install from list, don't search, the one you want should be in that list.) Once the driver is updated, you can reboot and enjoy your new dual core system.

Frankly, doing all this is a hassle. Even by doing this, some people say that their system is unstable at times. Considering the hassles involved, you are probably better of buying a harddrive and installing from scratch. It can be done, the question to you is do you feel like going through all this? (when I mentioned deleting the drivers for your old motherboard and you had no idea how to do that, buy the new harddrive.)

Good to know it is possible but risky for many people.
I would not do it my self even I have a higher knowledge
that average user.

By buying a new drive will allow you to return to your previous
configuration in a case that you new build is not working
(whatever the reason).

Up to you!

Thanks for the help.

I'm not sure about deleating drivers. I was hoping It would be possible to save over them with new ones. Guess, windows isn't set up like that.

I do have another partition so, guess I will move many files over to the other side that I want to save.

Ugh, really don't care for the reinstall of xp, office, sp2, internet 7, xp updates, avg, vlc player, flv player, raphsody, several dvd programs, nero, dark messiah, far cry, and many more. LoL

But least I don't have to do them all at once.

Second thought. I might be able to do it.

Device Manager right click properties and select unistall drivers for each sound,lan,usb, and thats on my motherboard.

and do the second step stated by:

Once you move everything over, you still aren't done. This is because your windows is still setup for a single core system. In the hardware manager under the computer tab, you need to change the "ACPI uniprocessor" to "ACPI multipressor" (right click, update driver, no connect, install from list, don't search, the one you want should be in that list.) Once the driver is updated, you can reboot and enjoy your new dual core system.

thanks 4745454b

i changed from an XP 2200+ to an X2 4200+ and windows took a complete $#!t on me and i had to reinstall. i have heard of doing it, i know there are ways around it but in reality they arent fool proof, they can range from midly annoying to full cmd line interface in the recovery console and copying sys32 files around...my vote is just do a fresh install, winxp needs one every now and again anyway. i know the pain you are going through but that's why i have physically seperate HDD's that keep all my programs, updates, patches etc safe so that even if i have to reinstall AND i have no internet connection i can return my computer to nearly the exact same state when i decided to reinstall. good luck!

Upgrading a Motherboard without Reinstalling

fresh install is better also a repair install may also work.

Think of it this way. You can always try to do it by deleting and installing drivers. If that fails, you'll have to install fresh or do the repair install. Either way, at least you tried the quick method. It should work, I've done it before without any problems, but others haven't been so lucky. Give it a try, at the worst, you'll have to reinstall which you would have done anyways.