Hello,I just got a new mainboard/CPU and memory and now I want to try and upgrade my XP system without a reinstall.Does anyone know if this can be done? I have googled it and there is plenty about windows xp, so I think there isn't any problem there. Not sure about all my other programs.My concern is FS related. Do I need to reinstall FS so it is in the registry? How about all my Flight1 products? Other products?Any advice would be helpful.My FS is installed on my D drive and not on the main disk.Thanks,PaulEDIT sorry.. I think I posted in the wrong forum.. should be in the Hardware forum I guess.

I'm not all that great with upgrading my hardware...rarely does it go without a hitch, but the times that I've done both the CPU and motherboard, my Windows XP installation would not start. It was fixed by doing a repait installation off the Windows CD however. After I did that, all my software worked like a charm.Maybe somebody with some more experience can cooroborate my claims??Tim

Thanks Tim,I read that windows can be reinstalled and that's fine... my worry is related to FS and all my payware stuff.Many programs write to the registry ( flight1 I assume with their key files )so I am wondering if I have to reinstall everything.If I do have to reinstall everything then I may as well format the hard disks so everything is clean and fresh. However that's a real pain in the backside with all the tweaks and patches I installed over the life of fs9.Cheers,Paul

Backup up your data first, then give it a try. If it doesn't work out, reformat and reinstall windows - you have nothing to lose really.Gary

Hi,Recently my daughter's Intel based MoBo with a P3 600 MHz CPU went belly up and I was faced with getting her back up and running again with the minimum of hassle both to her and myself ;)Well, I'll tell you, noone was more surprised than me when her elderly and original Windows 98 (not SE)installation happily allowed me to install an AMD based board sporting an AMD 64 3200 (939) and 512MB DDR PC3200 400 ram! Following the first reboot, all I had to do was some tidying up with the removal of the old MoBo drivers and, as a bonus, upgraded her from dial-up to 2mbit broadband - lucky girl!There's no getting away from it, Windows 98 was not such a shabby OS once you learned to cope with all its irritations. Fortunately there is no imperative, as yet, to upgrade her to XP so I can relax for a while longer.If the operating system does not change with an upgrade then you can expect to preserve most if not all your existing software entries in the registry. Even a reinstall of the existing OS on top of itself should preserve the status quo. I am sure that even if FS9 had been affected (in my daughter's case FS2002 survived unscathed - it was originally my PC) you would be able to recover the situation by renaming the original installation, install anew to reinstate the registry entries, delete the new FS9 folder and then rename your original folder back to 'Flight Simulator 9'. I've never had to do this in anger, but that's what I would do before resorting to anything more drastic.Mike

I recently did this temporarily over Christmas. I got a new motherboard, processor and ram and just wanted to try everything out without spending most of the night reinstalling everything. Upon first boot it started detecting seemingly bizzare devices (basically the guts of the new motherboard). After a few minutes and a few reboots all was well. I fired up FS2004 (with a lot of payware) and everything I tried worked fine.In the end though, I formatted and reinstalled everything just to get everything clean and "fresh", but I certainly didn't have any problems doing a dirty install. In fact, while I was ironing the bugs out of my new installation on my new hard drive, I kept my old installation on my old hard drive, and would just change the boot order in my bios depending on what I wanted to do at that moment.

If you can pull off a repair install the Registry should still reflect the FS9 install as well as the addons. But, unless you're new mobo has the same chipset as the old one the system probably (certainly?) won't boot. So, be sure you have the bios set with a CD-ROM as the first boot device as you'll need that option if you do a WinXP repair installation off the XP CD. Also, to do a repair install you need a "real" XP disc, not a "recovery" XP disc or something in a hidded HDD partition. In any event, be sure to back up everything as a repair install isn't always foolproof (or even works at all). I've done several mobo/CPU swaps and have learned the hard way that it's usually just quicker in the long run to reformat the drive and do a complete reinstall. But, all mileage is, of course, variable.Doug

For what it's worth, my old motherboard had an nVidia chipset and the new one has a ULI chipset and it booted just fine, without a repair install.But definately - your milage may vary. I agree completely that in the long run, a clean reinstall is best.

Thanks guys...I am going from an intel chipset (865) to a ULI set... got a new athlon 3800x2 on a ASRock dual mobo ( has both AGP slot and PCIE16 - so I can use my agp graphics card until the new dx10 spec cards come out ).I think I'll try the upgrade route... with the expectation that I may have to do a clean and fresh install.Then again maybe it is the excuse I need to clean everything up, it's just I am feeling lazy!Cheers from a very hot Lima.Paul

Try the advice given at http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/fo.../1400925745/p/1 Regards,

Hi Vassilis,Exactly what I need when I come to upgrade for FSX :)Many thanks!!MikeP4 2.4GHz (400FSB), 1Gig PC2100 DDR Crucial, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (Omega 3.8.205 (6.01) / Catalyst 6.1), SB Audigy (5.12.0001.0443), Hyundai ImageQuest Q17 17" TFT LCD 20ms Monitor (1280x1024x32), Gigabyte GA-8IRXP MoBo, Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 (160GB) + Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 UDMA100 (80 GB) , Ultra-Quiet PSU 400W, Logitech MX1000 Laser Mouse, WinXP Home (SP2), DirectX 9.0c, AGP Aperture = 128MB

Hi,I upgraded Mobo and CPU three weeks ago and just did a repair install of XP and all was well - up and running in two hours (including physical computer rebuilding time). It then took me a week or so to get all settings optimised for the new system but that'd be the same with a clean install as well!Cheers,Geoff

Here is a key statement lifted from that linked advice:Do I need to change the PC Type (ie. ACPI Uniproc to Standard PC)?You can change freely between ACPI types, but not from ACPI to Standard or back again. So you can go from ACPI Uniproc to ACPI Multiproc (even on a uniproc system) and expect no problems.This is related to the "hal" hardware adaptation layer that windows nt/xp uses. I think most xp installs on modern hardware use the ACPI HAL, so upgrading should not be a problem.scott s..