Trying to avoid an OS reinstall

Replacing motherboard, CPU and memory, can I keep the OS?

[MatthewHSE]

My brother's computer is seriously outdated for the work he's doing and I wanted to upgrade some parts. So I bought a new motherboard, new processor (quad-core!) and the fastest RAM the new motherboard will handle. Also a new 256MB video card to replace his old 32MB card.

The trouble is, I just did a clean install of Windows XP for him a few months ago and it's running really stably. I hate to mess with success, and therefore I was hoping I could just plug the old hard drives (a RAID 1 system with two SATA drives) right into the new motherboard and have it all work.

Can this be done, or am I asking for trouble? The biggest potential problem I see is that I had to install RAID drivers during the previous OS install, and the new motherboard will have its own drivers, which I figure may cause a problem. Is that the only thing to think about, or are there other pitfalls?

Any and all advice will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Matthew

[jtara]

I doubt that there will be a problem. Windows does a hardware probe when it starts up, and in most cases will automatically enable the necessary drivers. The only issues are likely to be specialized drivers, such as RAID, but you are keeping the same controller so should be no problem.

You may need to install a new video driver, or may need to get one from the manufacturer for optimum results. But Windows usually will have a matching driver, and if not will use the default VGA driver to get you going.

[edited by: jtara at 4:09 pm (utc) on Aug. 24, 2007]

[LifeinAsia]

New video drivers as well.

[MatthewHSE]

The only issues are likely to be specialized drivers, such as RAID, but you are keeping the same controller so should be no problem.

Actually, we're using the onboard controller. The old motherboard is a Tyan and the new one is a Gigabyte. Both have onboard RAID that is sufficient for our needs, so that's what we've been using (and planned to continue to use). So if I install Gigabyte's RAID drivers before swapping out the hardware, should that be good enough to at least boot up?

[kaled]

I am not familiar with RAID technology but why not use one of the two disks on the new computer, get it all working, then add the second disk?

Kaled.

[kwngian]

So if I install Gigabyte's RAID drivers before swapping out the hardware, should that be good enough to at least boot up?

In theory, that is supposed to work. As long as the drives are accessible and you don't get the blue screen, the rest of the other devices are plug-and-plug. But if the hardware are very different, there may be problems.

Why not just detached one of the drive as suggested and do a test. You can always rebuild the drives if there are problems.

[henry0]

Since you are already in spending mode
why not going all the way?
Get a new HDD, do an image of the old one etc.. done

[MatthewHSE]

I am not familiar with RAID technology but why not use one of the two disks on the new computer, get it all working, then add the second disk?

That is an excellent idea (one of the "why didn't I think of that?" types of suggestions! ;) ) I'll probably give that a try and see how it works. I'll probably still have to install new SATA drivers before I swap out the hardware, but that shouldn't be a big deal.

Since you are already in spending mode
why not going all the way?
Get a new HDD, do an image of the old one etc.. done

I don't see how that would really help since the image of the old drive would still include the drivers for the old hardware, right? So I'd basically be in the same boat I'm in anyway. In any case, these "old" hard drives are only a few months old, so it's hard to justify the cost of replacing them.

[youfoundjake]

Put all the new hardware in, attach the old hard drives, boot from xp cd, and do a repair.

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