Changing MB ... OS reinstall?

[TomServo]

I am going to upgrade my current PC's MB and CPU. I 'm going from a via kt133 chipset (Abit kt7) to an ALI chipset (Asus a7a133) and I 'd rather not do an OS re-install if I can avoid it (everything is running so good right now). I know in theory, I should just be able to swap out the components and Windows XP will recognize the new hardware and install the drivers for the board (sometimes with help from the user). I've done this before with Win2k and Win98 and it never seemed to work as well as when I would just do a fresh install after doing the hardware upgrade. Has anyone made chipset upgrades on their XP systems and noticed any problems? Also, I was considering uninstalling all the Via specific devices in the Device Mangler before shutting down to do the upgrade. Does this sound reasonable?
Thoughts anyone?

-Servo

 

[Krux]

yah I went from abit to soyo and had to format but when I went from abit to abit I didn't. so I think if you go to a cmpletely different company ur kinda stuck u get that BSOD just b4 windows starts that says like hardware failure or something I don't remember exactly its been like 7 months

Better advise will follow mine so just wait

 

[rettahc]

You will probably need to do a repair install. You should not need to format.

 

[leebobs]

Reformat A Must

I always re-format after a major hardware upgrade... such as motherboard, Hard Disk, etc.
It generally increases performance quite significantly over a simple repair job and gives you some time for a little house keeping.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

From my past go's at this you would be able to get away with a repair install BUT ....... it does not give you the best results .. IMHO you would be much better off backing up all your stuff and going for a fresh clean install.... I have pulled off a swop on win98se from an intel 166mhz to an amd 400 without formatting ....and not one bsd imagine that on win98 I swapped out the hard drive from the old 166 and dropped it into the ibm aptiva 400mhz AMD .. and another time I pulled my hard drive from a duron 1100 on a gigabyte board and dropped it into a athlon 1800+ on an epox board!! and got away with it after a repair install of XP .... but after all is said and done I did backup my stuff on this athlon 1800+ and went with the clean install I wanted to experiment and see what I would get away with ...so after all that yes it canbe done BUT its better IMHO to go with the format and clean start

 

[TomServo]

Mobo swap

I was afraid that the responses I would get would be like this and I tend to agree with them. I just recently recomended a friend do the same (re-install) when he upgraded as well. Guess I'll probably take my own (as well as everyone's here so far) advice and do the re-install. I keep my OS and Apps on one drive and all my files on another so it's easy enought to do a re-install without having to worry about backing up. I think I will try uninstalling all the Via specific devices from the device manager and try to restart with the new Mobo just to see what happens, and I'll report back here the results.