Changing a motherboard

jjbrien

I have a question I am thinking of changong the motherboard on my pc. The last time I doen this I had to format windows compltly I would like to avoid this again as I have lots of stuff n my pc which i would like to keep. I am running Windows XP Pro. Can anybody help?

irlrobins

Very hard to replace motherboard and keep the windows installation. The new hardware would require new drivers to be loaded etc. You'd prob find windows would fail to run properly if you just "hot swapped" the mother board. Just back up all your files and reinstall. Alternatively save all your data on to a separate hard drive or partition. That way you just need to wipe the windows partition.

MunsterCycling

Not to mention requiring re-activation.

8T8

As was mentioned changing the motherboard and retaining the existing Windows install can be messy your far better off backing up your data and doing a clean install.

However if you want to do it anyway here is the simplest method.

Step 1:
Check for any chipset drivers in the add/remove in control panel and uninstall them if possible. Then power off PC don’t reboot.
Step 2:
Remove motherboard and install new one.
Step 3;
With new system operational boot WinXP install CD-ROM
Step 4:
When prompted press R to repair the existing Windows installation [edit: pick repair install not recovery console for some reason unknown to me the repair option does not show on certain systems]- this will make Windows re-install the OS and in a manner purge the system of its existing driver database allowing you to boot the system on the new motherboard.
Step 5;
After XP is installed install the new motherboards chipset drivers along with drivers for any other hardware, when done check the device manager and see if there are any remains from the previous install e.g. an exclamation mark on a device and try removing them.

That should do it and remember to install XP service pack 2 as well.

You will have to re-activate the OS after doing this.

jjbrien

ok guys thanks

SouperComputer

IIRC there is no "automatic" repair option with XP Pro, only a command console.


You dont need to repair or reinstall windows to change your motherboard.

It might be an idea to backup your user profile as a matter of course before you do this anyway:


*In preparation, as the others have said, remove the old motherboard\chipset drivers.
*Google and download sysprep
*If your old motherboard\HD was using an ATA HD, change the driver to "stamdard IDE
controller" or simthing to that effect in device manager.
* If using SATA with the new mobo, install the drivers for the controller before you sysprep.
* Run sysprep with the following switches: -mini -quiet -reseal
* The computer will chug for a while and then shutdown.
* Change motherboard, keep extra hardware to a minimum for the first boot.
* Reboot, the computer will take a while to boot up, possibly as much as 20mins, its doing hardware scans in the backgournd, be patient.


The rest is self-explanatory on screen stuff, enter windows Key etc etc.

I change motherboards nearly every month, my installation for 2k is 2.5years old and XP is 2year old. So basically sysprep FTW