Do I need to format after changing motherboards?

[murphy55d]

I just bought a Soltek 266a board, question is, do I need to format my HD for the new motherboard? Are there any problems which arise if I don't format?

TIA.

 

[acejj26]

it would be a crapshoot...some boards run fine afterward, some don't

i'd personally format and do a clean install of the OS. that way you know you won't have any old driver conflicts.

 

[tboneuls]

what os are you running? i know in the older oses (and maybe the newer too) its best to remove everything in the system control panel and system devices, then shut down and put the new board in.

 

[murphy55d]

I am running XP Pro

 

[Pederv]

I've upgraded my sister from Win3.1 to Win98 on 4 motherboards and I'm about to upgrade her motherboard again. Granted it would be in her best interest to do a clean install one of these days.

Take a look at the FAQ's.

 

[murphy55d]

Probably would be less of a hassle to just do a format anyway.

Alrighty, thanks guys.

 

[Booster]

I just bought a Soltek 266a board, question is, do I need to format my HD for the new motherboard?

I don't think so. I'm pretty sure it's not necessary. I remember when I upgraded from a K6-2 300 to a PII with the same hard drive, and later to a PIII, of course, different mobos each time, and I didn't reinstall Win98SE. And the chipsets were also different - SiS, VIA and finally Intel. Not a single glitch. That's why I think that a reinstall isn't necessary.

 

[Electric Amish]

I've changed the motherboard twice on my install of Win 2k and everytime I've had to format.

amish

 

[PC166]

If you want to save time not having to reinstall all those apps that is time consuming such as Anti Virus, winamp, Nero, partition magic, drive image etc. then don't format! unless you get crashes constantly and there is no fix then go right ahead. I like to leave most thing intact such as installed apps, you be thanking your honey buns lol.

 

[zephyrprime]

How can it possibly be less of a hassle to reformat? It took me days to reinstall all my software when I moved to XP from 98 and moved to a new HD at the same time.

 

[LordAccord]

My motto is "formatting fixes all problems" I always format when I change vital hardware, its just part of it for me! I dont care how necessary it is or isnt, being able to format almost at any time if its needed is something I try to maintain the ability to do.

LoRdAccord

 

[murphy55d]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
How can it possibly be less of a hassle to reformat? It took me days to reinstall all my software when I moved to XP from 98 and moved to a new HD at the same time.

I don't really have all that much software I need to reinstall to be honest. Backup my save games and mp3s, then reinstall Windows, Office and a couple games.

 

[Dimitri]

Every single time I've changed motherboards or even controller cards, I've had to reformat or at least reinstall Windows. Otherwise, it wouldn't even boot up. That only applies to Win2k or WinXP though.

 

[SUOrangeman]

Sysprep can handle Win2K and XP for such an upgrade (there is an AT FAQ on this utility). I use Sysprep a few weeks ago to move from an IBM 60GXP to my WD1200JB. I will attempt to go from a uni-processor K7S5A to an SMP Tiger MPX this weekend ... with Sysprep and no reformat. Besides, who feels like reinstalling six OSes?

-SUO

 

[Maggotry]

The only time I had to format when changing mobo's was on a Win ME system. Never had to with 98SE or XP.

 

[BFG10K]

In most cases you'll be fine but I'd recommend that you reformat and reinstall anyway because you can have some nasty problems later on which are very hard to track down.

 

[spanky]

i don't. that is... if i don't want to.

 

[pillage2001]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
In most cases you'll be fine but I'd recommend that you reformat and reinstall anyway because you can have some nasty problems later on which are very hard to track down.

Listen to him. Nasty problems such as data corruption can happen. I had that happened to me. Just format it.