Should I Reformat This pc?

[one-shot]

My friend is running an older system. Athlon at 1.8ghz...single core...not a powerhouse. He is buying my old MSI KN9 SLI AM2 board and getting a new cpu. Can you just uninstall all the old drivers from the previous board and hook up the new board or do you have to reformat the OS?

 

[rubix_1011]

If you get really technical, you can probably collect all the drivers from chipset, SATA, RAID, CPU, etc and drop them in the right places...but not everything just goes in system32/drivers. The only way this works is if the chipset driver and mass storage drivers are the same from one platform to the next...you MIGHT be OK in that case.

You would be better off just formatting and reinstalling your OS.

 

[jeb1517]

I hope you have a retail CD and not an OEM like the ones that come with Dell computers.

 

[grieve]

I would format for him...
You friend will likely see an increase in speed from windows running of a clean install and think he got his money worth for buying your board

Ultimately for a couple hours work you cant go wrong with a fresh install.

 

[roadrunner197069]

Well it does kinda work. Alot of people try it. Ususally you get alot of errors down the road because theres no way to delete all of the hidden files and registy files and what not. Your best bet is format and have a smooth system.

I will never do it for a customer or myself.

I sold a computer to a accountant, and I'm going to his office Monday to install all of his programs/printers, and transfer his important files from the old HDD to the new HDD.

 

[one-shot]

I was thinking I would have to in the end. Thanks for all the good advice.