Conventional wisdom on changing MBs

[Wombat]

So I'm looking at changing motherboards. What is the recommended process to get away with this without reinstalling WinXP?

[Mehen]

replace it with the same motherboard?

actually, I changed this one from an asus P4B with a 2ghz to my current stuff (p4c800, 3ghz) without a problem (didnt have to reintall or anything). Might have been because they were both asus boards, I dunno. Maybe I just got lucky.
You should be able to just repair XP when you get your new stuff, and it "should" be fine.

[LvR]

So I'm looking at changing motherboards. What is the recommended process to get away with this without reinstalling WinXP?

All of it.

[schmosef]

I remember I did this a couple of years ago and found a web site that adviced booting in safe mode and uninstalling all the devices before doing the swap. Not sure if that's still recommended but it worked for me.

A quick google search found this: http://www.windowsreinstall.com/inst...oard/winxp.htm

Good luck.

[UtwigMU]

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x/a/tpc/f/77909774/m/1400925745

[GT98]

replace it with the same motherboard?

I had to redo my system even though I had the same chipset when I put in my MSI board.

[Gurm]

Well, conventional wisdom says you'll spend more time fixing whatever goes wrong than you would spend reinstalling. TRUST me on this one.

[RichL]

Under 2000pro, I managed to go from Via133 to MSI745 and two different flavours of NF2 mobo's before rebuilding when going to an NF3 using "Safe mode delete hardware & reboot" method.
Using the same method under WinXP I went from NF2 Dual, NF2 Single and back to NF2Dual agian before it crapped out.

[UtwigMU]

I swapped win2k on SiS735/Tbred/Gf2MX/onboard NIC and sound -> BX/PII/G400/SB64/realtek NIC without a problem. I only needed to install drivers and mbm.

[Gurm]

It CAN be done... I had a friend who went from Windows 3.1 all the way up through 95, Memphis, 98, 98SE, Win2k... before it finally got too angry. All the way he swapped hardware, ghosted from HDD to HDD... changed video cards. It was amazing. He was a MASTER at it.

But most people? Not a good idea.

[Dr Mordrid]

First do a backup then I uninstall the video, audio and other card drivers. After this I go into Device Manager and make sure the IDE drivers are Microsofts and not for the old mainboards chipset. I try to do this without allowing any prompted reboots.

Once finished with the uninstalls I then shut it down for the rebuild.

Dr. Mordrid

[RedRed]

I tried going from a Nforce 1 to an Nforce 3 (just to see if I could)

I couldn't!

RedRed

[Helevitia]

I upgraded from one Asus to another. I think it was from an A7V to an A7V266-E. So essentially it was upgrading to a new via chipset. It went through without a hitch. This was for my wife's and kid's machine.

[Gurm]

I tried going from a Nforce 1 to an Nforce 3 (just to see if I could)

I couldn't!

RedRed

Yeah, the nForce1 & nForce2 share a driver base, but nForce3 and 4 changed. And nVidia's drivers are... well, just like their video card drivers they are highly intolerant of being screwed with.

[Kurt]

I upgraded from nf2 to nf4 with the original nf2 drivers. xp didn't complain. it couldn't find everything of course. installing the latest drivers fixed that. then pq 8.0 nuked my partition after resizing :/