[Bigaggie06]

I am planning on upgradeing my dell system to be able to play newer games such as BF2, to do this I will have to get a new mother board since mine only has a pci slot no agp or pci-e. My question is will I have to reinstall Windows XP once I perform the upgrade and if so can I use the OEM XP disk that came with my system?

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No, you shouldn't have to reinstall XP. You will, however, have to re-activate it again. I upgraded a Mother Board 2 years ago, and had to re-activate XP. All other stuff on your Hard Drive should be fine.

[ghosthunter83]

No, you shouldn't have to reinstall XP. You will, however, have to re-activate it again. I upgraded a Mother Board 2 years ago, and had to re-activate XP. All other stuff on your Hard Drive should be fine.

[KGH]

I just completed a motherboard, cpu and ram upgrade with an XP OEM.

Although it is up to you, at the very least you should perform a repair install of windows, particularly if you are changing chipsets. This is the advice I was given when I asked the same question here a week or so ago.

You should back up all your critical data before you start taking your current system apart.

To perform a repair install, after hooking up the new motherboard, enter your bios upon booting and change the 'first bootable device' to your CD-ROM. Have your XP CD in the CD drive and have your CD Authentication number handy. You must have this number. Save the bios settings and exit.

After changing the bios boot priority and with the XP CD in drive, you should get a message 'Boot from CD - Press Any Key'. If you want to perform a repair, hit any key.

You will then be taken to the windows operating menu. You need to agree to the EULA by pressing F8. You will then be given three options - pick the first one by hitting enter. Don't choose to repair using recovery console.

You will then be taken to another screen with further options (such as repair install and new install). At that stage, you can choose repair install which is 'R' I think.

I found that after performing a repair install I had major instability problems which have only been solved by doing a fresh install of XP, but I suppose you might as well try a repair first.

Some people have had success not doing anything after upgrading a motherboard and have been able to boot straight back into windows, so it is up to you what you try, but the articles I have read and the advice I have been given suggest that it is preferable to perform a repair install at the very least.

Hope this helps.