Overhauling system, need some help....

[SethEffect]

Ok so I just ordered and bunch of new parts for my system. It's an HP w/ AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ and runnin on Vista Premium 32 bit. I have upgraded it with 3 gigs of Corsair RAM, BFG 650W PSU, and a GTX 260 core216. Basically I am planning this overhaul to relieve the bottlenecking that is goin on with my GTX 260.

On the way I have a Asus P5N-D nForce 750i SLI Socket 775 Motherboard , Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3Ghz 6MB 1333FSB CPU , ZEROtherm Butterfly CPU Cooler BTF90 , and Thermaltake Tsunami Alum/Clr Side Case. I plan on swapping all this plus the rest of my system (Hard Drive, DVD-RW) to the new case.

This is the first time I have done anything this major to my system, I am fairly confident in my ability to figure things out as I go, but I'd really rather not go in blind, so Im basically lookin for some direction as to what to expect and as to what problems Im likely to face. Will I need to install Vista again? (Im really hoping I dont have to shell out the dough to buy it.) Do I install the drivers for the new Mobo and CPU before putting them in? Will there be any problems switching over the Hard Drive to all the new hardware? Please, any help would be appreciated.

 

[ilovebarny]

well im going to answer your direct questions, as explaining the whole process would take too long.
Will you need to install vista again, yes, its the best thing to do. if you have the reinstall disk that came with your HP that should work fine.

when to install drivers. put all of your new components together, reinstall windows, install drivers. that easy(usually ).

problems with hard drive. as long as you format the hard drive (which there should be an option to do this when you start to reinstall vista) your hard drive will work fine (assuming you have the proper cables, which you should).

the only other problem i can think of offhand would be there is a slight possibility that your mobo needs a bios update before it will work with the E8400, but i'm pretty sure that the 700nforce series supports 45nm processors out of the bag.

 

[jedi940]

If you bought the computer with vista already on it you will have to purchase it and reinstall it. In my experience, the disks that come with HP are usually restore disks and not OS disks. In addition, the OS looks to the motherboard for a certain key and if that is not there, you will not be able to use that copy of the OS. Even if you enter the exact license key it won't work. I have tried this with dell disks. I had a laptop go bad and i took the authenticity sticker off it along with the OEM copy of XP home. I tried to install it on another computer I have here and it still wouldn't work.

 

[SethEffect]

Sweet thnx for the info guys. But yea, that pretty much answers my question as far as the OS goes. I did buy it with Vista, and yea all they gave me was the restore disks, well thnx for the info, atleast now I know ima gona have go and buy another copy of Vista.

 

[drobecks]

Unfortunately you should have bought the GTX 260 with 192 Processing cores. Apparently you are able to overclock it much more than the 216 and are able to get more performance out of it.

 

[SethEffect]

So guys I put everything together and decided to boot it up just to make sure there wasnt any problems. I was expecting to see to some sort of promt reguarding an OS or something like that, but to my suprise it just booted up, ran a disk check, and loaded up into Vista, no problems at all.

So whats going on here? I thought I was going to have to install Vista again. Did I something wrong or is this normal? Or did I just get lucky?

 

[jedi940]

i would say you got lucky. Perhaps HP has changed the way it authenticates it's operating systems. It's good for you though. As long as it works I would say you are ok. However, I wouldn't expect to be able to use the restore disks anymore. That might mess it up. But what do I know, i didn't think it would work as is. Glad to hear it though.

*EDIT*
Recently I built a new computer for my church. The plan was to move the current video computer to the audio side and build a new video computer. Both of the old comptuers were running xp pro. As I could not find the original install disks, i was hoping to just migrate Hard drives. When I took the old hard drive out of the audio computer and put it in the old video computer, it suprisingly worked without a problem. However when I tried to put the old video hard drive into the new computer it wouldn't even boot. I had to do a fresh install. Both hard drives were migrated into entirely new computers. Not even the optical drives were the same. For some reason one worked and one didn't. Still don't know why.