AMD to Intel Upgrade. Need a little help.

Ub3rn00b

[H]ard|Gawd
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I figured there would be posts about this on the forums already, but for the life of me I couldn't seem to enter the right search terms to get good results. So here I go:

I currently run a socket 939 motherboard with an x2 4400 and ddr ram.
I plan to buy an e6600 cpu and new motherboard and ddr 2 ram.
I don't want to have to do a fresh install of XP in order to get up and running on the new system.
What is the best way to handle this task?
When I went from Intel to AMD, there were some system tweaks and files you could edit before shutting down the old system so that when you hooked everything up in the new system, it would come up without a hitch using the same hard drive loaded with XP and with all my fancy programs.
I figure the same is true for going to a c2d intel based system.
Can someone provide a link to steps for making this change as easy as possible. I REALLY don't want to have to do a fresh install and have to load 500gb of programs again.
 
maybe use like drivercleaner and remove all your drivers might work, though a fresh install of XP would be the best.. like I format and reinstall XP ever 3-4 months just to have a fresh install
 
You REALLY should do a clean install when doing such a drastic change. Even if you do get away without it, you can be pretty much sure that it will not perform as good as it would have otherwise. If you're insistant on not doing a clean install though, the main thing is to remove all your drivesrs, especially ones related to the motherboard (chipset, IDE, lan, sound, etc etc) as well as video drivers.
 
sysprep will do the job, but since you're going from one chipset to another you'll probably be better off with a reformat and clean install.
 
I moved my XP from an Athlon XP 1800+ with VIA KT133A chipset to an E6600 with P965.
I used my Windows XP CD to 'upgrade' my own XP-installation. Basically it just reinstalls your Windows files, but leaves your registry, users, program files etc alone, so once it's installed, you still have all your applications and settings.
This doesn't work with all XP CDs though, afaik. I think you specifically need a retail version to get this option. I think OEM only allows you to install to a new partition.

Anyway, it works fine. I did use a special environment variable to display unloaded drivers in Device Manager. This way I could remove certain VIA drivers that cannot be uninstalled manually on a running system (eg chipset/hd controllers).
Now it's completely cleaned up, and my benchmarking results seem to coincide with other E6600 results on the net, so I don't think it runs any less than a fresh install.
 
The OP's questions pretty much reflect some of my concerns (read: fears) about upgrading my platform. The thought of reinstalling XP, then the Service Packs, then installing Office and the 800 patches to that and that's before I get to my games or figuring out how to get my RAID 1 storage devices to work. I like to upgrade in an afternoon, not a week.

I've bookmarked that sysprep thread for future use in case I need it :)
 
FWIW, I've found that doing a final boot to Windows in the old system, going to device manager and removing everything associated with the motherboard (don't forget IDE controllers and any onboard niceties like network ports and sound cards) gives me decent results. Uninstall the CPU in Device Manager too. Turn off the PC, install new mobo/cpu, boot up and let everything autodetect for a good long while, then run the motherboard CD and install the drivers.

Not as good as a new install of Windows of course, but I've had surprisingly good luck with just the above.

BTW, you can ease a bit of the pain of reinstalling Windows by creating a slipstreamed copy of the OS + service packs (and if you're really tenacious, as many OS patches as you care to download as well, I believe). Google 'slipstream windows xp'
 
Call me paranoid, but I'd rather just spend the time backing stuff up and doing a scorched-earth OS installation from scratch in this case as opposed to doing a patch-over install and running the risk of having to do a scorched-earth reinstall later anyway because something flaked out during the patch-over installation. But that's me...as seen above, YMMV.
 
Perhaps, but in my case I have so many applications installed, and so many custom settings etc (which afaik I can't just backup) that it was worth a shot to see if I could get my current Windows installation working on my new system, without having to reinstall and reconfigure all that software I've collected and customized over the past 4 years or so.
 
Entirely understandable, believe me (staring at Windows Update chugging along, staring at various game patches chugging along, backing up your email, etc.). I'm a firm believer in worst-case theory, though...but, again, that's me. As Mama Redshirt would say, go for what you know. :)
 
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