Old HDD and upgrading CPU/Motherboard.

[alien_robots]

Hello,

I'm on a tight budget and wish to upgrade my computer starting with the CPU, motherboard, ram. and wish to use my current HDD to save money. I will be doing clean Install of a new OS and don't care about saving data.

Currently have:
-500gb SATA HDD
-winXP 32bit
-intel cpu
-motherboard with ddr2 ram support (4gb)

Upgrading to:
-Win 7 64-bit Home
-AMD cpu
-motherboard with ddr3 ram support(8gb)

Is there anything I need to do before using my old HDD with these new parts? Like, do I need to uninstall winXP before plugging it into my new Motherboard? Or can I just Plug it in, as is, and "boot from disc" to do a clean install of my new OS?

With such different hardware, I don't want to take a chance and have things screw up!

What would happen if I changed the parts I specified, plugged in my current HDD, and just booted up. Nothing good I'd imagine. Please help.

Thank you

 

[TechyInAZ]

If you just booted up with current HDD then no it wouldn't go well, but it wouldn't' hurt anything.

And yeah just boot to disc to install windows.

However, you will be bottlenecked by windows xp until you get windows 7 or 8.

 

[alien_robots]

Thanks a bunch. I will be getting the parts and new OS this week.

May sound like a dumb question, but can I enter BIOS settings without a Hard Drive plugged in?

I was thinking that maybe after installing the new Hardware, but before plugging in my hard drive, I go into BIOS to make sure that "Boot from Disc" is checked. Then, reboot, with HDD plugged in and Windows 7 disc in tray.

I always get nervous that I will miss the prompt to enter the bios haha.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Your computer will run slower on a new operating system.

1. Assemble components
2. Enter BIOS and set all to defaults.
3. Set Boot order to Optical first
4. Put Windows DVD in optical Drive
5. Save and exit BIOS

Follow instructions for Clean Install on sevenforums.com

 

[alien_robots]

Your computer will run slower on a new operating system.

1. Assemble components
2. Enter BIOS and set all to defaults.
3. Set Boot order to Optical first
4. Put Windows DVD in optical Drive
5. Save and exit BIOS

Follow instructions for Clean Install on sevenforums.com

Thanks a lot. Very helpful.

But why will my computer run slower? I plan on doing the clean installation and my upgraded parts are MUCH better than what I currently have.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

What I should have said is any hardware will run slower on a new OS than an older one .... this should be obvious by looking at minimum system requirements... This has been true since forever. MS created a lot of hoopla pre-release of Windows 95, ....you can imagine how the enthusiast public reacted when it turned out that Win95 was 40% slower. The press tried hard ..... real hard ..... to downplay the issue. When PC magazine for example did their PC Roundup of 100+ PCs, they mentioned that some manufacturers submitted identical system ... one with Win96 and one with WFWG.

The magazine separated the charts for the two OSs by over 100 pages. But a few astute readers bothered to compare the two and were quite surprised that the new OS (Win95) was 40% slower than the older WFWG.

So yes, your new hardware should make your computer go faster but the newer the OS, the slower it will go. Of course MS manages to force upgrades by sunsetting support and even w/o that, may not be support in older OS's for newer hardware.