How best to change motherboard without losing recordings?

[Knobby]

I just did the same thing for someone last week. I took out the motherboard from a Dell P4 (faulty) and installed a new Asrock motherboard. Once everything was connected up I just booted up the computer and away it went. It spent a little time installing XP default drivers for everything it could, and once it was finished I inserted the CD which came with the motherboard and installed the correct drivers. No problems at all with XP booting up with the new motherboard in place.

I too work with computers for a living and, like Shadowze, have swapped quite a few motherboards without having to reinstall XP. In fact, I can only remember one occasion when the computer refused to start properly no matter what I did so I had to reinstall XP. This however was many years ago.

If it was me, I´d just swap the motherboard and see what happens. You should be fine though.

[frazer]

Thanks again for all the advice.

Actually, I have tried to use an old hard drive with a new motherboard a couple of times in the past, and both times XP failed to load; it came up, if I remember rightly, with a message suggesting that some hardware might have been changed, and then would just repeatedly go to the "start windows in safe mode" etc. options page, everytime I restarted the computer (and none of the options would work).

One thing I know I didn't do on those occasions though was to load the new motherboard drivers before changing the motherboard, so I guess it would be worth trying that this time, and then if that fails I could just go for the two hard drive option (which might be better in the long run anyway).

Cheers,

Frazer

[tiger66]

About 3 weeks ago, I upgraded my computer from an Athlon XP motherboard with a 2500+ processor to an Athlon 64 X2 AM2 motherboard, Athlon 64 X2 6000+ processor, and 2G DDR2-800 RAM. I installed the motherboard drivers from the CD-ROM after the installation of the new hardware and after booting into Windows XP SP2. No problems, except for the whole "We noticed that your hardware has changed. You will have to revalidate Windows XP or it will cease to function in 3 days..." crap, which really isn't a problem, just an annoyance. Revalidated Windows once the network drivers were installed and I was off and running.

One thing of note in this case was it took a bit of cajoling to get Windows XP SP2 to recognize the upgrade from a single-core to a dual-core processor (so it would use both cores). After installation of all the new motherboard drivers and the specific AMD drivers for the processor, and a couple of reboots due to driver installation, all was well (task manager showed 2 cores, device manager showed 2 cores, etc.).

I believe with any new motherboard/cpu combination as an upgrade, your mileage may vary, but at least in my case, everything went surprisingly smoothly.

FYI,
Tiger

[shadowze]

Thanks again for all the advice.

Actually, I have tried to use an old hard drive with a new motherboard a couple of times in the past, and both times XP failed to load; it came up, if I remember rightly, with a message suggesting that some hardware might have been changed, and then would just repeatedly go to the "start windows in safe mode" etc. options page, everytime I restarted the computer (and none of the options would work).

One thing I know I didn't do on those occasions though was to load the new motherboard drivers before changing the motherboard, so I guess it would be worth trying that this time, and then if that fails I could just go for the two hard drive option (which might be better in the long run anyway).

Cheers,

Frazer

I was not suggest trying to load the drivers for the new mobo before removing the old one. ( it will probably complain )

I was just saying have them stored on the hard drive before taking things apart. ( preperation )