Comments for Must I reformat if I replace my motherboard?

Comment from oldtimer on 2008-10-25

2008-10-25T10:36:01Z

What a waste of space this article is. All you've done Leo is sit on the fence and muddled the information on what you can and can't do. Where's the definitive YES or NO that people count on from the techs-for-hire? The answer is out there..the CLEAR answer. Fortunately I had it before I came here. Look elsewhere people and you will find it is possible.

I disagree that there is a "clear" answer. (And why didn't you share it, if it's so clear?) Fact is it depends on the specifics of the situation.

- Leo
25-Oct-2008

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Comment from Kevin on 2008-10-21

2008-10-21T15:17:37Z

Hi. I am new to the whole computer building thing having only done one before. Working on a second build for a friend and have a lot more trouble than the first. His MoBo was zapped so i told him i could install a new one for him. Ended up installing the mobo and all his existing peripherals except cd-rom (had to get a Sata CD rom drive because his new motherboard didn't have the Eida ports for the old one. Heres the problems... the board will not recognize the old hard drive in the bios. I figured whatever killed the old Mobo killed the Hrd Drive as well so we picked up a new WD caviar and installed it... still no luck. Am i Missing a step here or is possible the Eida port on the mobo dead? From reading the article i think maybe i need to format the disk. How Do i do that? Help please!

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Comment from Don Wade on 2008-08-27

2008-08-27T21:57:52Z

I built a new computer from scratch and installed windows xp pro OEM with sp3. The motherboard went crazy. I replaced with a totally different model. Can I reinstall that copy of windows?

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Comment from Jason Klug on 2008-07-16

2008-07-16T19:18:33Z

Self-built system in December. Motherboard died last week. Warranty replaced the identical board. I installed it, and everything works fine...except the system will NOT shut down. Go to shut down, and it restarts everytime. Nothing in the log file...don't know what to do.

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Comment from Camnam Namina on 2008-06-26

2008-06-26T12:50:08Z

I remove my previours hard disk because it corrupt!!
I buy a new one and reformat it with windows xp sp2, After loading everything form windows xp sp2, and comes to a state where Setup is Starting Windows, it stays there and won't continue..can anyone HELP ME PLEASE!!!!

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Comment from Dan Thompson on 2008-05-11

2008-05-11T18:31:24Z

I was pretty jazzed about the prospect of changing out my OEM motherboard. Shame on me, I bought a system without PCI-e. I believe many of us have OEM systems and they do not come with WIN XP CD. As I researched the issue I discovered that there is NO common ground among the "experts". My IT rep said - "just drop that baby in and power it up - no need to do anything else" Yeah right. Too many conflicting opinions. My advice - for the faint of heart - save your bucks and get a new system that meets your needs. It's pretty sad really, all the great board bundles out there - and you are stopped dead in your wide eyed tracks. No CD - NO upgrade.

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Comment from Leo A. Notenboom on 2007-03-20

2007-03-20T20:01:00Z

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Please read the article you just commented on. It addresses exactly that
question.

Leo
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Comment from Brad on 2007-03-20

2007-03-20T18:35:27Z

I am soon to replace the motherboard and CPU. I just need to know whether or not i will need to do a complete re-format. I am asking because i have a pre-installed windows xp system thus i have no OS disk. This is a really great feature to have as i can put my computer back to purchase state whenever i want but i need to know if this will work when i have replaced the board and cpu. When i do the change over my computer will be back in its purchase state and so when i go to turn the pc back on it will go straight into xp setup. Will this work the same way as having to format and boot from an xp disk?

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Comment from Justin on 2007-01-16

2007-01-16T22:07:57Z

Just replaced the motherboard and processor. Went to do a reformat, but when we put the xp disc in, it goes through all the checks, but when you get to the first screen where you hit "Enter" to install, once you hit enter it just freezes and says "Please Wait..." at the bottom of the screen. We have tried several different known good sticks of ram, several known good hard drives, and cant seem to figure it out.

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Comment from Matt Miller on 2006-12-27

2006-12-27T23:08:04Z

I installed a new MOBO and have everything running, I have alot of files backed up on 2 other HDDs, They work and are recognized BUT XP would like to reformat them. I dont want that. Is there ANY way to not have to format the 2 HDDs?

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Comment from sammy on 2006-12-23

2006-12-23T20:57:08Z

my computer was given to me it run a bit then shut down . i cant get past the system starting up on the black screen for loading it ask for a bootdisk error please insert start up disk i dont have one what can i do.........i cant even type commands wont even go to start up page..........

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Comment from Jim Beam on 2006-12-15

2006-12-16T04:21:22Z

I replaced my motherboard and processor and I didn't have a problem. Guess I was lucky. I even installed versions of windows on different hard drives plug the hard drive into a totally different computer and windows loads right up.

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Comment from Darth Leo on 2006-09-08

2006-09-08T08:34:07Z

Many of you will have to do a "Repair" from the XP CD. It still may not work correctly afterwards.

You really have to PREPARE your system before you replace the motherboard. Changing the IDE drivers to standard, the video to standard is probably a good start. BACKING UP ALL YOUR DATA is also a must. If you don't know how to back up your data, you have no business changing the motherboard.

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Comment from Tom on 2006-08-30

2006-08-30T10:12:00Z

i have just changed my motherboard and my processor, since doing this my pc wont boot up, it gets to where it would load windows and then restarts, HELP!!!

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Comment from Vikram on 2006-08-28

2006-08-28T13:59:38Z

I want to replace my motherboard. it is a D915GLVG chipset .Is it possible to replace it with a new one without changing the processor.

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Comment from Elliot on 2006-08-07

2006-08-07T21:17:48Z

Leo,

I have a sony Viao that i purchased in 2001. It has a p4, 1.5ghz processor, 384mb SDRAM and lately it has been acting really slow gaming wise. Here's the question: I also have a Emachines 1.9ghz AMD 2300+, with 128mb DDR....should i change out the motherboard so that i would be running off the emachines since it has better RAM and Speed or should i stay with the VIao for its Pentium 4?!

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Comment from ibrahim on 2006-06-20

2006-06-20T08:58:51Z

i canot see the universal serial bus controller in the device manager and when i put any flash memory it doesn't work what i can did.my leo computer is p2 .

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Comment from Gream on 2006-05-27

2006-05-28T01:01:53Z

i need help. i just recently replaced my mother board, and i cannot reformat. i have my windows xp disk and i try to boot from CD-ROM drive, but it just says Booting from CD:_ and stays there forever and does not boot. i cannot reformat and i was wondering if i need to buy a new hard drive.

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Comment from DigitalChaos on 2006-05-25

2006-05-25T18:36:05Z

I replaced my processer and my MOBO , however I did not realize that any such hardware changes will cause this problem to my windows untill I did the change, so a repair did not work, after copying the files setup needed it will reboot the computer, and then it wont actually load into the windows setup (offcourse without pressing the anykey to boot from cd) it will load the windows which will obviously fail.

Any suggestions?

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Comment from Redwan on 2006-05-18

2006-05-18T15:57:33Z

how in the hell will i put the new pinless PCI Xpress motherboard in my PC by Myself? Please let me know

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Comment from Tansen on 2006-04-10

2006-04-11T04:23:19Z

I have a problem along the lines of what is being discussed here. My sister's motherboard fried so I replaced it. The post goes fine, memory seems ok, drives are detected, but now I get the "error loading operating system" and that's as far as it goes. Her hard drive was working fine and she has a lot of pictures and things she would be pissed about losing. From what I read here if I use the XP cd to REPAIR the installation windows should update the new motherboard drivers and be functional again. Is this too good to be true??
Mahalo

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Comment from Mike on 2006-01-14

2006-01-14T17:40:33Z

I have changed my motherboard on my pc which I built about 2 years ago. I also wanted to reformat my hardrive. I only have one HDD, it's a 120 gb. I went through all the steps taken in doing so..I booted from cd-rom first, using the same windows XP CD I used to originally install XP and selected the NTFS file system. (There was also the option of doing this with the work "quick" next to it, but I wasn't sure what this was used for so I selected the NTFS without quick) However, after the hardrive was reformated 100% the next screen said it failed and it might be due to a damaged hardrive. However my hard drive was not damaged before I changed the mother board. I am almost positive I didn't cause any damage through static electricity or any other means. Can you please help me and tell me if it's possible I made an error somewhere? Thank you, MIke.

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Comment from Dafydd Johns on 2005-12-20

2005-12-20T19:38:09Z

Hi. I have recently come home from uni, and bought back my hard drive frm a computer i have up there. When i put it in my new computer it has the message "WIndows did not start successfully.A recent hardware or software change..." came up. Well I have read around and people say this is somtiems expected. Well when i take my hard drive back 2 uni, will it work as usual up there?

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Comment from Mikie on 2005-12-03

2005-12-03T08:55:49Z

It is perfectly possible and also practically feasible to change the motherboard (and all the rest-CPU, memory, drives, etc.) without reinstalling Winblows. I have done it myself, and it worked.

The proper way to do it is to go into the Hardware Devices manager and remove ALL of the "System devices" - BIOS, PCI and AGP bussess, memory controllers, everything. Also remove anything else that will be changed, maybe the video card and built-in USB ports? After you have done that, shut down and change the boards. When the system is started next time, Windows will discover all the new devices on the board and install proper drivers etc.

It is also possible to move the Operating system to a completely new hardware, including the disk, which involves doing a full backup, installing Windows on the new drive, then restoring the backup on the new machine, but NOT restoring any hardware drivers. Microsoft Knowledge Base has few articles about these things.

You are right, Leo, any opportunity to clean up the clutter Windows accumulates over time should not be missed. Fresh installs are always the best and fastest way.

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Comment from Steedprance on 2005-11-28

2005-11-29T01:46:57Z

hi,leo. i also met this problem and have formatted the harddrive on another machine by just right click and format. then i put the harddrive to the new motherboard, insert xp CD. when the blue screen showed up and asked me to choose enter , repair or quit(ESC)
the computer shutdown itself (which happened also before I formatted the harddrive).
did i format my old harddrive correctly?
how to solve the problem?
thanks!

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Comment from Leo on 2005-07-09

2005-07-09T15:38:52Z

You don't need to reformat, if that drive is going to be the "second" drive. The only one I recommend reformatting is the one that the operating system will be installed on.

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Comment from Hyle on 2005-07-08

2005-07-08T22:04:41Z

I was wondering about a certain issue I have realted to this. I want to replace my motherboard with one that uses more and better RAM (perhaps a new processors wouldn't hurt either) I know that I must reformat the drive containing the o/s but I also have a larger drive I use for storage and most of my new programs/games and I wonder if I must reformat this one as well. I've downloaded alot of program updates for some and would prefer not to download them again though something tells me that attempting just a switch on the board and master drive will not be enough.

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Comment from Randy Allen on 2005-04-12

2005-04-12T13:57:15Z

I have done this several times and formatting and starting fresh is the best way, especially if you can add a new drive to the mix and increase drive space. Install the OS to the new drive and use the other one for additional space as a data drive.

For people that just can't start over, I have also had success with XP doing a repair installation. This loads the correct drivers for the new chipset so XP runs without having to reinstall all your programs. You may have to load some drivers seperately, like the intigrated network and sound cards, but this is true with a format, also. The advantage here is you can be back up and running in less than an hour.

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