This weekend I was told by a seemingly expert at hardware, that I will no doubt be forced to reformat my HD when upgrading from:AMD 2800 socket 754 w/ AGP MBTO:AMD64 3700 socket 939 w/PCIe MBIs this true, will I REALLY HAVE to reformat my HDs?thanks,Eric T

If you want to avoid troubles, yes. It may not even load windows after installing the new hardware.

Okay then. Now, I have tons of software and stuff on here. What's the best way to back it up? Can I simply back it up on my second HD?

Yep, you can backup onto the second drive.. :)

>This weekend I was told by a seemingly expert at hardware,>that I will no doubt be forced to reformat my HD when>upgrading from:>>AMD 2800 socket 754 w/ AGP MB>>TO:>>AMD64 3700 socket 939 w/PCIe MB>>Is this true, will I REALLY HAVE to reformat my HDs?>I made a similar upgrade and was told both on forums and by the reseller that reformat would be neccesary.I turned out to not be the case. I encountered some problems and was told not to ask questions to support and getting wrong suggestions.Well they finally gave me one advice that worked. Reformat and reinstallation would have not solved that problem.Other issues was addressed by installing new drivers.I havn't reinstalled Win XP for 3.5 years.I do have some problems but I'm not certain a reinstall would solve it,For example every time I disconnect my MP3 player I get a bluescreen and crash message IRQ_LESS_OR_EQUAL.My DVD CD rw is very unreliable. But the support have told me that this is likely a hardware problem.Another anamoly do I benefit from. One game (RTW) does not require the CD in the drive anymore.

You should not need to reformat anything. Install your motherboard and CPU, boot into the Windows CD Setup, and follow the path to install Windows. Windows will detect your existing OS, and will ask you if you want to install fresh or repair the existing installation. Choose repair, and bingo. No problemo.Ghttp://ca.geocities.com/[email protected]_BigO_new.jpg

Thanks guys. This seems rediculous to me. I may be wrong, but I cannot fathom why it would have to be completely reinstalled. I will try this w/out reinstalling first.Further suggestions appreciated by all people and all views.Eric

Each user will experience a different outcome. I followed directions this weekend to upgrade my computer using Microsoft as my guide. I thought it would be easy but no it was not. Bottom line is try to use the methods you can find on Microsoft.com which says to start an XP upgrade and stop at a certain point. It works for a lot of people but I am just coming back up. I must admit it has been a pain but most would recommend starting from scratch anyway.New machine AMD 64 3500 socket 939 with an Asrock MB which allows me to use my ATI X800 XT PE. It is pretty slick but I am still finding my way. At least I got FS9 running along with a few add-ons. Still have a way to got but my FPS is double my Barton 2500.

In my experience it's better to do a reinstall than patch or repair a current install.When I changed from Intel to AMD and booted up I couldn't even get into Windows.Up to you at the end of the day, but you'll no doubt have problems along the line at some point.

I would never even dream of switching motherboards without doing a clean reinstall of XP. It is a huge shock to Windows' subsystem and you're likely to see resource conflicts, remnants of old drivers and registry entries clogging things up, etc. Just take the time and reformat to start fresh.