Did a mobo change last night, everything went very well. All I needed is a repair Win XP Pro after booted up from the CD. So far, the system is running very stable.

BTW, I changed from old Asus P3V4X (via chipset) PIII 1G to Asus P4B266 (intel chipset) 1.6a G.

Hey, that's interestening! I remember the previous discussions about this and (unless I forgot) I think the conclusion was that it should work, but that it didn't and that a fresh install was to prefer...
Do you mind tell us a little, did you start with going inte failsafe mood and uninstall all drivers and then changed mobo?

Here are the things I did before the changeover:

1) BACKUP THE DATA (to my 2nd HD)
2) Run Regcleaner (JV 16 Powertools)
3) Run Norton WinDoctor
4) Run WindowWasher
5) Run Diskkeeper
6) Uninstall any VIA drivers in Device Mangers
7) Shut down

After the changerover:

1) Re-install video driver
2) Run Windows Updates (about 25 updates I need)

All your system/applications setting should be there. The only thing didn't work for me is Style XP 1.0 (cracked). I can't re-install it due to an error. That is ok with me, I just use Style XP Beta 3.

[quote:587429bed1][i:587429bed1]Originally posted by .unicorn [/i:587429bed1]
[b]Do you mind tell us a little, did you start with going inte failsafe mood and uninstall all drivers and then changed mobo? [/quote:587429bed1]

Ok, thank you!
Basically you just removed the VIA drivers then. Well, even more basic is to make an image of the drive first...:) I'll try this at next mobo-change.

To add to the story, I just changed from a 733 intel to a 1.2 amd. From a gigabyte to a ecs board. The only thing I did was to do a repair of Windows from the CD. Board drivers have to be changed to allow it to restart. All setting were saved and no loss if any software.

I did a MB changed as well.
I did not remove anything..
just ghost image the partition..

after the boot for the new MB..

new hardware detected ..
all I did was re-boot


BTW OS is DO XP..

As I understand it the "Corp." version of WinXP Pro does not do the Hardware Changes Lockout thingy that the other versions do. Helps a lot when you are doing some large Corporate wide "Rollouts" of the system, and the last thing you need to hassle with are Hardware and Key problems..... :cool: :D

Another thing, but I am not sure of it. I read somewhere that MS allows a major change of the system every 180 days. So you can upgrade any part of the PC or even install the activated serial on a new PC without problems. But in those 180 days the system has to remain unchanged.

Thanks for these precious informations because I will do a major upgrade next week ;)

And I also read this :

Solution 2; In-Place Upgrade to force hardware re-detection:


1) Review and complete Pre-Action Procedures described in the Pre-Action Procedures section above.

2) Change motherboards or move hard drive to new system.

3) Boot the system from the WinXP CD. Have your CDKEY ready.

4) Select the ?Install? option. (Don't select repair! The first repair option only verifies XP files against the XP CD versions and makes no system setting changes).

5) Setup will find the XP install that is already there and ask if you wish to repair it. Say yes.

6) Setup will run the upgrade code that will re-enumerate the hardware and set itself to boot from the new controller.

7) Install newer drivers as needed.

Note: Microsoft Knowledge Base Article:

You May Lose Data or Program Settings After Reinstalling, Repairing, or Upgrading Windows XP (Q312369)

/http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q312369

Well, better than the luck I had. I had a Gigabyte KT400 7VAXP motherboard go poof on me, and tried to use the same hard drive to go back to my Gigabyte KT333 7VRXP. One would've thought that to be an easy chore, but despite using the CD repair and deleting things to get reinstalled, it just didn't want to work. Ended up reinstalling, a sad end to a sad story.

Good for you, though!