Rebuilding question

[Khalil]

My Dad's computer is a bit older it has a bad mobo. He has very important programs and Data in his machine and would like to keep his hard drive intact with the same OS.
What I would like to do is replace everything except his hard drive, CD Burner and Floppy.
The hard drive has windows 2000 Pro on it, if I replace the mobo, processor and Ram will it still boot the old hard drive?
Any steps I need to do before hand?
I would appreciate any help here.

[Khalil]

Anyone?

[blue60007]

I would hook his drive up to another computer and pull all the important data off of it. It's not garuanteed to boot with the new hardware configuration.

[CrazyPenguinDude]

I suggest you get a USB device, (one with as much memory as your computer) and load all of your dads programs/data onto it. Then just build a computer and install your OS. After that just load all the information he had on it. plus you can get a better hard drive.

p.s. if its important private data, after you make sure EVERYTHING is on the new pc, destroy the old hard drive its lots of fun.

[jayb1234]

I would suggest installing that hard drive in another computer and copying his files to the second computers hard drive in case anything goes wrong with the new setup. other option put it in an external housing and copy the files to the second computer, but you would have to buy a housing. A repair install of windows might work, or might not. If he has a brand name computer the manufacturers OEM windows liscense key might be too tied to the original hardware to work with that many changes in the hardware configuration and you wouldn't be able to activate it. A repair install with a new copy of the same version of windows should work.

[blue60007]

It's Win 2000, I don't believe it has a repair option. But it may or may not boot with the new configuration.