Machine overhaul w/o XP Reinstall

Long time lurker, first time poster...

Now I know better than to try to do what I'm trying to do. The correct thing is to format, reinstall clean, and live a happy life. But here is the deal:

Power outage took out wife's machine (Intel 2.4 - Intel 865 Mobo). This is more than fine because I've been dying to upgrade my XP2500+ to a 939 based machine. So you can see where I'm going with this. She gets my mobo, processor, and video card - everything else (RAM, sound card, and all optical and hard drives) stays put.

Now due to a bunch of stuff that is already loaded / configured / etc on her current machine, I do not want to blow away everything, reinstall apps, and then reload her data. I'd much rather unload all the mobo / video card drivers, do the swap, and live with a bunch of driver loading...

Is this even possible? I'm worried about the dreaded XP checking your hardware and determining that I'm illegally installing XP. Also I'm worried that it pretty much just won't fly at all.

Now that I think about it - I'm sure I'm hosed. Since the machine is toast, I can't boot into it to unload all the drivers. The first time the box will be turned on is with the new hardware. Bah. Boot into safe mode, and then unload everything???

Anyway, any help would be *GREATLY* appreciated.

Thanks!
-- Jason

What to do is build the machine then reinstall Windows. This requires booting form the CD like you are doing a clean install. When it asks do you wish to do a fresh install or repair do the repair. Do NOT use the 'Repair Console'. Go past that and the installer will detect the previous XP install and offer you a repair option or clean install. Do the repair. This will allow XP to redetect the hardware and all the programs and files will remain the same. Depending on what version of XP you MAY have to call MS and reactivate but otherwise you should be fine.

Z

Awesome. Thanks for the info. Will post again tomorrow to share the results.

That did it. Took longer than expected with the 3 billion updates you have to perform when loading the original XP. At least that task is mostly automated now, but still takes quite a while to go through. Thanks again!
-- Jason

If you had a slip streamed CD for SP2 the process wont take as long

J

XP will detect the different hardware. Just do the build and do a XP repair install.