Windows XP Pro Stability after massive upgrade?

[Wheelman56]

I'm building a completely new computer, a very large upgrade from the pile that I'm currently using... I planned on using the same harddrives I have in this thing right now with the new computer (3 total). The 3 harddrives, keyboard, mouse and monitor are the only things I'm keeping from the current computer. I was just wondering... will Windows like, not work because everything has completely changed? Or will it just find alot of new hardware on its first boot? Thanks for the help.

Current Computer:
AMD Athlon 750Mhz
320 MB SDRAM (64 + 256)
Nvidia GeForce 3 Ti200 64 MB
Some Gateway Mobo, no clue

New Computer:
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
2 GB Corsair XMS 3-4-4-8
ATI Radeon X850XT Platinum Edition
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum

 

[mechBgon]

Windows will freak. There are workarounds but the safe money's on a fresh installation of Windows. If you're not practiced at keeping worms out, remember: get a firewall in place before you connect to any network, whether it's your modem, your college LAN or your wireless access point. The firewall keeps worm attacks and hackers out. more suggestions for securing fresh Windows installations

 

[Wheelman56]

Well I really didn't want to reinstall Windows, since my windows cds and crap just magically vanished and are no where to be found. My friend gave me his Windows XP Professional Upgrade CD packet thing with his key on it. I have a Windows 2000 CD that I could use to get the installation to run, which is what I thought I was going to do until I read on here about having to activate your Windows XP and stuff. And I figured I probably shouldn't use his XP then if it might mess up his. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do now... after my little "purchase" I made of new computer parts, I don't really have the money to go out and buy a new copy of XP.

Any suggestions here?

 

[Raduque]

I have read something aroudn the web (years ago) about moving a single XP/2K install from one mobo to another. The problems come up, because XP can't find the correct IDE driver for the mobo it's being swapped to, and it freaks out. So I believe the solution was to install the IDE drivers(and possibly full chipset drivers) for the mobo you're swapping to. I've personally never tried it, as I've always just done a straight-up format/reinstall when I switched mobos.

 

[mechBgon]

Any suggestions here?

Yeah, you could grab the beta WindowsXP Pro 64-Bit Edition from Microsoft, it's a 360-day free trial. That would give you some time to either save up money for WinXP 32-bit (regular) or hold out for a release version of WinXP 64-bit. The download is around 550MB so hopefully you have broadband

 

[superpandapower]

I had a similar situaiton to you and I just used a Windows XP repair installation and everything came out perfectly. I was amazed it worked. I've read that others have gotten this to work too, but I recommend that you clean up your windows install a bit first. I definitely cleaned up a lot and that probably helped.

 

[Wheelman56]

mechBgon, is WindowsXP Pro 64-Bit a stable running OS? I know its a beta, so is it really buggy? I'll read some of the threads around here on it too.

superandapower, what kind of things did you clean up from your Windows installation?