Reformatting HDD?

[woot7800GT]

What exactly is involved in installing a new mobo + CPU? I hear alot about reformatting the HDD, what does that mean exactly? Erasing ALL data or what? God this is such a noob question....

 

[GoodNews101]

You need to reformat when you put a new motherboard in due to different drivers, et. al. You need to burn all the data you want to keep to CD/DVD, i.e., important files, etc. You are basically "erasing" your OS from the harddrive and then re-installing under your new motherboard. Then take your CD/DVD with your saved data and transfer it to your newly reformatted disk.

 

[woot7800GT]

Uugg.... I hope I can get my DVD burner working.
So to reinstall windows, just use the recovery disk that came with my computer?

 

[shdwsclan]

I'm not sure whats with people reformatting their hds. Usually it depends. XP is PNP and it should detect device changes. You can always uninstall and roll back all the componts to windows default setting. You can boot xp in safe mode on new hardware by pressing F8 to interrupt regular boot procedure. In safemode, you can install new hardware. You really dont need to reformat the hd.

 

[shdwsclan]

There is only one issue i can think of and thats ACPI