Upgrading Motherboard, Processor & Ram.. Need To Format?

[Chief-Phillips]

Tomorrow I'll be getting a MSI K4T, AMD XP 2100+ 1.75GHz, and 512MD DDR 333MHz RAM, to replace (you're gonna laugh, lol) my Intel 82810/Celeron 500MHz/192MB SDR 133MHz RAM (I told you, no laughing ).

I'm wondering if I'll be able to use my current HDD without formatting. its a Western Digital 80GB 8MB Buffer, with Windows XP Professional. I don't really want to format and lose everything, its way too much to back up, yanno?

Thanks ladies and gents.

 

[Blizzard596]

I'm not sure, but I believe XP keeps track of your installed hardware and will not function if there has been a drastic change in hardware configuration (ie putting the hard drive in a new computer) part of microsoft's stupid copy protection I guess.
Maybe you have a friend with a large hard drive with 80+ megs that you could back up to via network - I have done this with some friends a couple of times. Takes awhile, but beats having to buy a new drive.

 

[The Rage]

You may get lucky and get by. But I doubt it. The hardware your replacing is not even close to the new stuff. You'd be better off with a fresh install anyways. What your doing is almost like swapping a hardrive to a new PC. Not recommended.

Good luck....

 

[waynejkruse10]

whenever you do a drastic upgrade, to get best performance, a fresh installation of windows is best.