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What would happen IF?

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Zatrix

Member
Joined
Jun 14, 2004
Location
moving to ohio once 2012 gets closer
when i take out my old motherboard/processor and put in the new one and put in the new ram reconnect EVERYTHING again and hit the power button.... what will happen if i DONT reformat my hardrive with windows on it?
 
Depends on the version of windows. Also depends on what your upgrading from and to.

More details and I can offer some advice. No 98 won't go from a p3 with a via chipset to a Athlon xp and a Nf2 chipset. Windows XP will cry foul more than likely but its worth a try.
 
If you put in a new mobo, you will most likely have to reinstall windows. The mobo is usually the last thing to be switched out, so Microsoft set it up so it must be reinstalled with new mobo. Get the tag you got when you purchased winxp, you will need to register it again also.
 
Yea, even if you dont have to reinstall windows, you have to activate and register it again. Plus, youy system will run more slughish.
 
Repair install basically wipes out any drivers and reloads them along with all the system files. All of your accounts are still ran peachily just some programs need to be reinstalled because they get pulled out of the system. Like office and such things will run but some stuff will be broken. Also you should hit windows update after a repair install because a repair install wipes out alot of patches.
 
they should still be there. the only thing is u'll prolly need to install games that need the cd/dvd drive to run since i have that problem after doing repair installs.
 
IMO I would reformat save all your data before changing you system a new install always work's better IMO.
 
You could do that. I normally save mine to disk that way I can fromat both or all of my harddrive when I do my install. Yes you could install windows then get all your files of the other drive then format it later.
 
You have to format before man, but yeah, easiest way is to copy all files needed to one drive, format the other, plug everything back in.

Make sure the drive you formatted is the master, (personally i wouldnt even have the other hard drive plugged in while installing windows), make sure you have a cd-rom drive set to be the first boot device, and install windows xp.

Does any one else find it insanely annoying that XP drives cant be hot plugged into new MB's, bloody microsoft
 
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