Part-build - should it work??

[innwhen]

Hello all,
I'm new to the self-build game, and would be very grateful for your advice on my upgrade plan.
I have a 5 year old Socket A board & AMD 1.3MHz processor, and want to:

1) Install a new Socket 939 board, AMD 64 3000 processor, GeForce 6200 graphics card, and new 400W PSU, all of which I'm assured will be compatible.

2) Keep my existing IDE hard drive with contents!

I'll be backing up everything onto an external drive before proceeding, but I'm wondering...

* What will happen when I power up?!

* What will I have to do after that, and in what order?

* Will re-activating XP be straightforward?

I'm running XP Home. Many thanks in advance!

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by innwhen I'll be backing up everything onto an external drive before proceeding, but I'm wondering... * What will happen when I power up?!

You'll probably get an error message from Windows and the boot process will stop.

Originally Posted by innwhen * What will I have to do after that, and in what order?

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install

Originally Posted by innwhen * Will re-activating XP be straightforward?

Shouldn't be a problem since you've had WinXP on that system for quite awhile.

Since you're swapping out the motherboard you could also try this: Before shutting down the computer in it's original configuration, go to Device Manager and right click on the master IDE controller, click on Update Driver, if the Hardware Update Wizard pops up click on "No, not at this time" and then choose "Install from a list or specific location" and then pick the standard dual IDE controller. Then when you have the new parts installed the computer should boot up without the error message. You'll have to install all the new drivers for the new parts.

Cricket

[innwhen]

Many thanks for the quick response! Any other issues that members think I should be wary of?

[jayb1234]

If that XP is an OEM factory load from a name brand like Dell or HP, you need to get a new copy.

It will be tied to the bios on the original machine and won't work on a new build.

Save all your files and settings to the external HD, then make sure that when you reformat the drive that you zap the manufacturers hidden restore partition.

Then do a fresh install with the new copy.

[innwhen]

Thanks Jayb.
It's a full XP disc. Do I still need to reformat? Might be a silly question, but I was hoping to get away with mirroring the whole drive onto an external drive with Norton Ghost, then simply transferring back again.
If you're laughing at my naivety I'll take it on the chin!

[Staren]

It should work. Just follow Crickets post about doing a repair install. You will have to do that because the drivers for all the hardware on the motherboard won't be right once you change it out. If you have the time, really th cleanest way to do this would be to dump all your files onto an external drive, then doing a full reformat and reinstall. Again, mirroring and then blasting the old install back on should work, but you will have to do a repair at the very least to get drivers sorted out.

[jayb1234]

With a full XP version, crickets option should work fine.

Wouldn't be any need to reload from the ghost image, unless something went wrong.

A reformat and reinstall from the XP disk would be cleaner, but quite a bit more work.

[innwhen]

I'll give it a try - many thanks all!