Motherboard & CPU swapping

[HelpDaVaio]

I've built PC's from the ground up before but never attempted this.

I have a Sony Vaio PCV-Rx770 from around 01 or 02. It has a P4 2.2Ghz and the memory is maxed out at 3 sticks of 512mb.
It runs XP. I would like to simply replace the motherboard and cpu with something new. Probably a gigabyte with AMD 4 core.

Can I simply make this swap, connect the 2 hard drives to the IDE and boot up?
Has anyone done something like this?
I don't want to reformat the hard drive. I want a simple swap & run.
Can it be done?
Will there be any boot up problems?
Will XP recognize the board & boot up?
ANy recomendations?

I know, I know, everyone will probably tell me to start from scratch but I don't want to with this one.

Thanks

 

[nnyisjesus]

expect to have to call microsoft and re-activate windows. more times than not youll get it done, no charge, but theres a small chance theyll say no. so be prepared for the risk. i guess, though, you could call them for hours trying till you get the right rep on the phone, but you WILL have to re activate.

id reccomend just upgrading what u got. lga775 mobo sockets can hold any lga775 in power limitations, so a core2duo might be a better upgrade path for you. your ram prob sucks as its more than likely not even ddr2, so upgrading to a new mobo will cause you to change it. might as well do a new system otherwise.. =/

 

[T_T]

On top of what nnyisjesus said, you can't take bootable hard drives from a previous build and put them into a new build and have them just be able to run, that is unless your replacing the existing mobo with the same model.

There will be old hardware registries set in Windows that will conflict with the new hardware. If you're lucky, all you'd have to do is replace the display driver, or the new rig may not even boot.

I have done a HDD swap into a different computer once, it wasn't pretty.