Replacing Motherboard Question

Well I've built systems before but I've never had to actually replace the motherboard. I was reading another topic which I'm not sure where it was around these forums, but it was about having to reformat if I install a new motherboard. So my motherboard and processor will be arriving today and I am hoping I won't have to reformat. First off, will I most likely have to reformat? I'm running not only XP but also Red Hat 9 in a dual boot using GRUB. My biggest problem is I have a lot of data that I wouldn't be able to get again and all I have to back files up is a CD burner. Any advice?

Well, my parts have arrived. I have thought of one possible solution if reformating is needed. I could do a clean install on a hard drive I have laying around but sadly there is only 1 spare drive I have. It happens to be a 20GB deathstar. That could possibly hold me over until around the time I could get a DVD burner to clean up like 40GB of files.

If the mobo used the same chipset you might not need to format the drive, and if it is different you could try to boot in safe mode and unistall the chipset drivers and install the new ones.

As AVG stated. You shouldn't need to do a reformat. If you boot from a WinXP installation CD and carry on as if you want to install a new OS it should say that a previous OS has been detected and give you the option to repair it. If you do this pretty much everything should be the same except for a few drivers like graphics card maybe.

Also I noticed that after upgrading to SP2 and then changing the motherboard I didn't need to do a repair to the OS. Give it a try as a reformat is the last thing you probably want to do.