Would upgrading a mobo/processer require a Windows Reformat?

[Koosh]

I probably need to do that anyway, but if I were to upgrade my current 1700XP to something along the lines of a 3000 64 with a motherboard, would a reinstall be required? or is windows smart enough to figure it out? (hah)...

Thanks...

[bleachit]

I just replaced my mobo on my comp, and I had to reinstall windows..

[Morfesto]

You can get away with a system Repair if you have your windows CD.
But its allways better to use a fresh install of windows.

[RobAGD]

With XP I am not 100% sure butit *shouldnt*.

You will need to install the newest chipset drivers and the like butmost of the should be on the disk you getwiththe MB.

I have done MB swaps on Win98se, WinXP, Win2k Pro without a problem.

-Robert

[Koosh]

I suppose this is where all my partitioning would come in handy...

On my 40gb "master" hdd, 1 5gb partition that I installed windows on, Two 17gb partions that I don't have alot of files on.

On my 80gb "slave" hdd, I keep most of my important files (pornography), games and such...

So I'd just have to nuke my 5gb partition and reinstall on that... since I do that, I'd have to reinstall all my games, right?

[Jeremizzle]

Well I fried my motherboard and bought a new one, causing me to reinstall all of the hardware...and all of my data was still there intact.

[brianlojeck]

back up yoru data and try it, you might get lucky.

with nt/2k/xp it's kind of hit or miss. xp might be better then 2k in this regard, but I've had it work, and I've had the machine die horribly after changing motherboards.

[Can_Opener]

If its an exact copy of the same motherboard then no. If its a different motherboard then yes mostly, because Windows will be angry that it can't find the hardware for the drivers that it has and that it can't find the drivers for the new hardware. If you want to try and save your data, install the new chipset drivers, burn your data you need to cd, and then reformat after. Your computer will thank you later.

[WickeDKlowN]

You might get licky and not have to, but it would still be a good idea to anyway.

[xmetal2001]

Technically its possible not to have to reformat, but your much better off reformatting.

[purple]

As far as windows XP guidelines go, you will have to call them to re activate since more than 6 major parts have changed (all stuff you never would think of, like north bridge mem controller and other stuff) Normally reformat/reinstall when i do a major platform change, i partition my hard disk into a small OS partition and a large data partition. So, if you want everything to work right, remove all the old drivers install your new stuff, then install their drivers. Just reformat/reinstall and save a headache

Purple, the rambler

[WickeDKlowN]

Actually, if that happens to be a 1700+ JIHUB, with a good mobo, good ram, and good cooling, you can do some insane oc'ing with them. I've seen people running them at like 2.5GHz stable.

[Can_Opener]

Almost all of the unlocked TBred B's were awesome oc'ers, its too bad I ended up with a locked Barton 2500+ or I would have this thing cranking out a lot more Mhz for sure. Oh well, mobile barton is always an option. My favorite overclock was the guys that took the $40 Duron applebreds to 2.8 ghz.