Pitfalls to watch for when swapping motherboards
 

I'm upgrading from an Epox 8kra2 to an MSI KT6 and want to swap the rest of my current set-up as it stands onto the MSI.
Is it just a case of swapping all components over without having to reformat the HDs.

Can I start up the new board and fingers crossed not come across any hassle?
I've got a couple of SATA HDs on Raid 1 and both boards use a Via VT8237, so I'm hoping that there is nothing difficult about this?

Any pearls of wisdom before I start tonight?

Nick

I've done it both ways (missus ;) )

I've swapped a mobo, ran up windows, new hardware blah blah blah worked fine.

I get paranoid about the old drivers being on though so I usually backup important stuff, wipe the disk and reinstall. I actually did this at the weekend and opted for the wiping and reinstall due to the length of time my system has been up and running i.e. a bleedin' long time so it was full of kak in the registry from things that had been installed and subsequently removed.

Is there an issue with not reformatting in that you need to reactivate windows (assuming you are running WinXP) due to the major hardware change?

I'd backup your important data before hand, try just swapping them over without formatting and see what happens. If it all goes tits up, you can wipe the disks knowing you've already backed your data up.

Its the hassle of having to reinstall everything again that I hate.
I'll do a full back-up this afternoon then just do a straight swap to see what happens.
I know about XP having to be re-registered, but this will only be the first (of 5 is it?).

Nick

Nothing like the peace of mind of a clean install, in my book - especially with something as pivotal as a mobo.

Just moving the hard disk to a new mobo won't work in some instances if the hard disk adapter is changed, windows just won't boot up. I have this problem with a W2K server install I ghosted and then tried to reinstall on a different machine, it just wouldn't work.

i installed a new mobo and cpu and my system fired up, i stuck in the windows cd and booted from cdrom and windows sorted out everything for me, i didnt expect it to work, but it did :D

i went from a athlon 1.2ghz with 512mb SDRAM and a crappy jetaway board
to a asus board, 2.6ghz athlon and 512mb ddr

suprisingly worked fine, although i do clean my registrty every few months and stuff to keep it running 100%

You may need to reactivate the cd key with microsoft but apart from that should be fine.

If you can though i highly reccomend a clean install.

It all went OK apart from having to reactivate windows and reloading drivers for the printer and soundcard.

nick