Is it possible to change motherboard without formatting

[Sean J]

I have a computer with Windows XP Pro installed. I want to know that if we change the model of the motherboard, do we really want to format it? What are the risks if we do not format, does that leaves the current operating system in the same place?

[Steve123]

According to me you can reinstall Windows without formatting. However you will be having a dual boot with Win XP and Win XP (twice) that's all! I do not know the other method if you don't want this.

By the way I think it is best to format!

[Ashok.M]

There is no need to reformat; if your partition is NTFS, then your new motherboard will see all its components plug & play detected by XP Pro. Then install all the drivers included with the motherboard. Once all the drivers are done; in the device manager, right click on the name machine and click on "Search for hardware changes" and a good installed XP will find all the drivers.

Finally once everything is working properly and after verification, you can remove the detection of obsolete equipment in the manager (if any).

Finally a good defragmentation, and a good cleaning of the registry and that's it.

[mv]

Even if the new motherboard has the same chipset than the former (or the same family, such p35/x38/x48) there is really no need to format. If another chipset (if we change from Intel nvidia, for example), it may be possible if you uninstall all the drivers any specific motherboard (chipset, ide, sound card, firewire etc...).