upgrading mobos - clean WinXP necessary?

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MarkK79

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Dec 9, 2005
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Just got a new LCD monitor with a 1280X1024 resolution. So want to get a better videocard to run games at that resolution. Currently have a 6800GT on a AGP mobo with 1 gig RAM and FX-53. So I am looking to upgrade to a PCIe mobo and 7800GT.

I do not want to lose the programs and data on my current hard drive. I was going to just swap mobos and then hook up all my old components (including hard drive) to new mobo. I was told that this will work but it is better to have a CLEAN, new install of windows XP (and thus lose stuff on my hard drive).

Does anybody have any thoughts on this? Is it that important to start with a clean install of Windows when swapping out mobos? If I don't do a clean install, what will be the possile negatives?

Thanks.
 
I always do..

My two cents though..

I hear Sysprep works ok, but I have never used it..Always prefer to format..
 
you would be well advised to do a clean install.to many different drivers to deal with.if you were going from a nf 4 ultra board to another nf 4 board it would probubly work but this instance i doubt it.save all your info to a second hard drive and just copy it back when the windows installation is done on the main hard drive.i swapped an asus k8n4e dlx 754 board to an asus a8n-e ultra and all went fine but all drivers were the same and boards were very much alike.i still went and reloaded after a few weeks.benches were higher after reload,and i installed a 20 gig ide drive and saved all my music,pics,cookies,mail and downloads to the second drive and just copied them back on the primary drive after windows install.plus i believe your going from agp to pcie and you more than likely will have some problems.so good luck with whatever you decide to do...........
 
NF3 and NF4 boards use a lot of the same drivers. You should be able to do it, but like others said, I'd just format and reinstall.
 
In the past I've always reinstalled with a motherboard change. Hell I've often done a reinstall after a soundcard or video card upgrade. Lately - I was in your same boat. I went from a Nforce3 AGP board to an Nforce4 PCI-E board, and from a 6800GT video card to a 7800GT. I booted up to safemode first with the new board and removed all the nvidia drivers, rebooted, installed latest Nforce4 drivers, rebooted and then loaded the video card driver, rebooted and I was up and running like nothing changed. SO the moral of that long drawn out story is you might get lucky, you might not. You might take 3 hours to reinstall and get mostly back on your feet, you might spend 6 hours battling the OS after swapping motherboards... Just backup your needed files first, and try the swap. First issue you can't resolve in 10 minutes - start thinking of reformatting
 
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