Need pre-install help.

[cmichaelt]

Background:
My motherboard died so i'm upgrading to a faster cpu and a different motherboard. I had XP Home and am thinking of doing a fresh install to XP Pro via an OEM package.

Previous Mobo : Emachine Variety
Previous CPU : AMD Athlon XP 2600+

New Mobo : ASRock D
New CPU : AMD Athlon 64 3200+

Harddrives :
115 GB Generic that came with emachine (Windows was
installed on this drive[br]
250 GB Westeren Digital Partitioned into approx 50/50

Question 1:
Is it possible for me to just intall and be able to keep all drivers, programs, and files?

Question 2:
Do i need to save the old drivers from the harddrive before i reformat it and install? If i do how can i get these since Windows won't load on another mobo/cpu?

Question 3:
Is it possible to save all the programs to another harddrive and run them from there? If yes, what do i need to do?

Question 4:
Should i install Windows XP Pro onto one of the partitioned Western Digital drives? Should i reformat before i do and will it reformat only that partition or the whole thing? Or should i just use the same drive as before?

 

[Zoron]

Question 1:

You should be able to keep all the files and drivers... programs you'll probably have to re-install.

Question 2:

Depends. What drivers are you referring to? You'll likely need to download new drivers for the mobo anyway. If you're talking vid card, etc... then you can always download the latest driver after Windows is installed. If you're on dial-up though, you may want to save them.

Question 3:

See answer to question 1. While it may be possible for some programs to be copied over and run from any location... there are others that make registry entries or have other config files that must be modified to work from the different location.

Question 4:

If you want to save any of your data, you'll obviously have to install Windows to a different drive / partition... as it's best to format and install Windows fresh.