ASUS P4S533 Mother Board

That motherboard will not accept the new processors and ram. Just throw it away or donate it or turn into a media pc.

If you did buy a new cpu and mb, you might be able to use the Hard drive, but you will need a fresh install of Windows Xp since it's a totally new MB and CPU. You're better getting a new hard drive too. The hard drives of today are way faster than the hard drives of 7 years ago. Western Digital Blacks and Samsung Spinpoints are some of the fastest 7200 rpm hdds. If you're not so sure about building a computer, there are plenty of decent computers for $300 - $500 that will be 100 times better than your current computer.

Thanks for your answer. I should have mentioned that even though I bought my computer 7 years ago, I have since did a lot of upgrades. I installed a new 500 Watt Power Supply, Sound Board, ATI video board, DVD player and plugged it full of memory. I also bought a super nice case for it with fancy blue lights and gauges just like in a car for sound levels, fan speed and temp gauges.

I also installed a new 7200 RPM top of the line hard drive, and some USB extenders. The only thing that is still original is just the Mother board, and since I have so many programs on the hard drive I was concerned that they may not work, or that I will have to buy a new license for each one as it may seem like a new computer, and I am only allowed to install most of my software on one computer.

To me the only option is a new mother board and I would be right up to date. Does the XP Pro operating system correct this? I bought my computer off Ebay and the person who sold it to me never gave me the CD's and as such I would not have them if they where needed for the install.....any suggestions?

Also if I bought new XP Pro software to get the disks,,,will it install on top of my installed software, or do I have to format the hard drive and install every program by hand. Probably 50% of my software was bought off the net and I do not have any disks for those. Thanks for your help...much appreciated.

First of all, do you need a new motherboard?
If everything is working, then just leave it as is.

Once you switch MB an CPU, you will have to re-install Windows XP and all you software, but I have seen some people switch out their motherboard and didn't re-install. They get blue screens now and then when it does boot up or it doesn't boot up at all.

If you are concerned about all your software then, you should just leave your computer alone or try to get the Install files an keys for all your program before making the switch.

Thanks verily kindly for your information.

Thanks for your reply and I am now waiting for my new ASUS mother board and Processor to arrive by UPS as I decided to upgrade. I have already a year ago bought a new Hard drive that runs at 7200 RPM.

I also bought an XP Pro Retail package as my computer never came with discs and I need the discs now to finalize the install.


Here is another question .

From what I have researched, I can load the XP discs into my boot up drive, probably a CD rom, and when XP loads, I click on an option called......REPAIR as compared to Load, and XP will now scan all of my hardware and software and make them compatiable to the new mother board and processor. Is this correct?

Thank You kindly for your answers

The Repair will fix corrupted system files. It's not guaranteed to make it compatible. You will still have problems later down the road. From my 10+ years experience in fixing computers, I have never seen it work the way you want it to work with Windows XP. I've seen Vista and Windows 7 more tolerant to major hardware changes.

your video card is agp so that would need to be changed, powersupplies have changed connectors since sata came to frutition so i would make sure your powersupply has a 24 pin atx connector as well as a separate cpu 4 pin connector and sata connectors.. if it doesnt then its time for a complete new machine.


personally i would go for a AM3 machine if your on a budget - a Phenom x955 processor with a Asus or Gigabyte AM3 motherboard, 4GB of ddr3 ram, a Sata hard disk and a 5650 video card or higher if your into gaming.


If you want so spend more then a Intel i core 5 is available for a little more - go for a i5 860 as this is quicker in many apps than any AMD.

Sometimes is just easier to start afresh.

Darn it, I should have bought windows 7 as I assumed XP Pro was still the best of them all. If all fails I will have to buy Windows 7, as I would now guess the alternative is format the hard drive, install the os, and install all of my software manually on the newly formatted hard drive. The problem is that I don't have discs for all of them, and also have some expensive software only licensed for one computer and as such I will be spending several hundreds of dollars to rebuy my software......now that is what sucks, and I can't believe in this computer age, that no one has a solution on how to buy a new computer or upgrade without having to rebuy all of your software again.