Q: I want to replace my motherboard, processor, and memory but I do not want to have to reboot my system and reinstall everything. I want to go from a gigabyte 939 ultra motherboard with an athlon 64+ 3000 processor to something more modern and up to speed. I plan on staying in the athlon brand, if that makes a difference. I don't want to have to reinstall windows, I don't want to have to reinstall my programs, I dont want to backup my files. I am keeping the same hard drive. Is it possible to do this?
A: You can do it.However I don't advise it. When you put in your windowsXP cd go through the install. Right after you hit F-8 for the EULA it will ask you a second time to do a repair of windows. Hit yes or ok or R or whatever to do it. This will reinstall windows without deleting your files. You may have to have a floppy disk with harddrive controller drivers if windows doesn't see a harddrive. Just hit F-6 at the beginning of the install when it asks too. However, by doing this you keep all the crap you had from your previous version including drivers from the motherboard that could cause conflicts...in the least it's clutter.