Frankenstein it

[Surrender Earthlings]

Hey, all.
I want to upgrade a system for my sweetie.
That means a new mobo + processor, new memory, and new videocard.

She doesn't want to lose the hard drive and current occupants thereof.

What's the best procedure?

[cableuser]

Well if you don't want to loose the os you would have to find board with the same chipset as the current board otherwise you would be forced to reinstall windows. Otherwise adding new ram or video card will have no effect on the hardrive. Just make sure you uninstall the drivers for the vid card before upgrading to avoid potential problems. I reccomend you do not do that however.

Your best bet would be just to back up important information unto a dvd or another hardrive and just format the drive adding the old information back on.

Now for new parts well...thats a different story. What your budget for these new parts?

[Staren]

The safest thing to do would be to back-up all the imprtent files onto an external hard drive (not a full drive back-up, trying a repair install while keeping the hard dirive intact is asking for trouble) and do a full format of the drive before rebuilding the computer. Then reinstall Windows, and add the saved files back on.

You can try a repair install of windows after rebuilding the hardware, but that can get kind of nasty. I would take the time to do a proper back-up.

[mojo]

Definitely do a back up just to be safe, but you really don't have to re-install windows. The safest thing to do is to uninstall all the motherboard and chipset drivers, put it together with the new hardware, and boot up. You'll need to install the new motherboard drivers and likely have to re-activate windows. Doing a re-install is nice to give yourself a clean slate though, but if you decide to do that it's much more effective to do a reformat as staren suggested.

[glc]

A repair reinstall will be required unless you change the IDE drivers. Refer to our thread in the Tips and Tricks forum.

[Surrender Earthlings]

I appreciate the advice.

I was hoping (against all reason, really) I wouldn't have to re-install windows, etc. I've never learned the proper kung fu technique of BACKUP. The last time I did a wipe of the Hard Drive, I tried backing up lots of docs, and more importantly, family photos. Guess what? I couldn't grab them back (thank you so much, Nero) after the new installation.

glc, in your tips & tricks forum, Do you teach Good Back Up Kung Fu for the phobic?

[glc]

A repair reinstall should not affect your programs or data.

[Surrender Earthlings]

As to what will be used as new parts? Here's my less than fool-proof plan:

-SAPPHIRE 100165L Radeon X1650PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card

-OCZ Gold 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

-ABIT KN9 ULTRA Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra MCP ATX AMD Motherboard

-AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Orleans 2.4GHz 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Processor

-Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2b w/Upgrade Coupon for Vista

That's it. I already have a power supply ready.
Let me know what you think.

[glc]

I don't comment on AM2 builds as I won't do them. I do 95% Intel - but I will do a 939 if asked.

[Surrender Earthlings]

Frankly, glc, I think I (and others) ask a heck of a lot from you. Thanks for everything.