XP Home reinstall

[olopbob]

I burned up my cpu, motherboard and floppy. Rather then replacing at high price for
parts and labor, I would just like to upgrade with a barebones system retaining all my
periphials. Will Microsoft allow me to reinstall or copy from original hard drive to new
system? I use drive image. My XP is a CD upgrade from ME.

[DallasDon]

Kinda got two choices. You might get lucky and slap that hard drive in an upgrade machine, and have it boot up.

Probably give you an error message to phone Microsoft because you made too many hardware changes. If you have the coa that came with the XP, no problem.


Second would be to boot from CD, and either do a repair or clean reinstall. I have no experiences with reinstalling an upgrade version, maybe others will help with that.

[Atomic Rooster]

Yes it will. The worst case scenario would be you would have to reactivate. No big deal. Just a simple phone call or internet connection.

[olopbob]

Wish I was a hardware man. I have already spent more money on service than a new system costs, and mostly my own fault. Plus I'm due an upgrade and just trying to avoid rebuying XP.
How do you reactivate and where? Should i call or write first so when I barebones I'll be sure not to include OS?

[stroyal]

It should make you reactivate as soon as you start the computer and sees all the hardware changes. A while back, I changed a processor and a video card at the same time and windows would not let me start without reactivating. It asked me to reactivate upon reboot. They had dial up at the time and dial up did not work. Then we did it manually over the phone (spoke w/computer) and that reactivated it. I happened to be there today installing cable on that same computer and had to reinstall XP because Explorer wasn't working (probably because of AOL installation). That reactivation was automatic and worked instantly on cable.

[olopbob]

Post #11 of 11

Just thought, I am up now with small replacement proccessor on old MB. Could I network new system into this XP installation and just move periphials to barebones? Then I could just move software onto new hard drive. Think?

[SeanC]

That wouldn't work. You can't "network" to an installation. You need to install Windows fresh on the 2nd system because so many things will have been changed that just moving the hard drive over wouldn't work. Windows would have a hairy.

You'll still have to do the reactivation anyways.

Sean