Installing new mainboard

[johnami]

I'm going to be removing my old Epox motherboard, Thunderbird CPU and AGP graphic card in order to install a new 939 board with an AMD 64 3500 CPU and PCE 6600 GT video card. My question is can I do this without formating my hard disk under Win XP? I'm really happy with the way everything is installed and to re-install will just be a pain.
So is there a way that has a good chance of working or do I have no choice? I have heard that Win XP doesn't like change.
Thanks in advance for your help.

[Stompy]

There's no telling really. Sometimes it has a fit and you have to reinstall, other times you don't. Good thing to do is use the files and settings transfer wizard now to save stuff onto another partition on your HDD, when you reinstall you can import this and it will be pretty similar to how it was before.

[mike_w]

The best thing to do would be to reinstall Windows - it eliminates the possibility of problems from changing motherboard. Besides, it's good to reinstall Windows anyway every so often!

[ice 73]

i would recomend reinstalling windows when u dont reinstall windows and you upgrade alot of hardware windows will be laggy and buggy. in my experience any way.

[Clstrphbc_donut]

Personally ive upgraded my motherboard, CPU, RAM, and GFX once, and XP refused to boot. Theres a massive hardware change going on and TBH i dont think XP can boot with the huge changes.

So it looks like a format and re-installation is on the cards.

[bujinkan-ka]

In my experience, it is far better to start with a clean slate. Installing new drivers over existing ones can cause a fair bit of trouble.

[Defiant]

Nope you wont get that install of windows to work, the chipset has been changed. Plain and simple small changes can be done to windows but CPU and Mobo chipset changes call for a complete windows reinstall.

[buzz_lips]

You will defo need to reinstall windows. Just too many differences in what you are changing. It won't take too long on that set up and just have all your driver disks to hand and defrag visit Blueviper's webpage of Window tweaks and away you go