Operating system & program removal

I hope I've posted this in the right forum; beginners question; if I were to replace my motherboard, CPU, ram, and reuse my drives, case, etc... will I have to replace my operating system (Windows XP)? Windows is stored on my HD (right?), but it will see a new motherboard/processor, so will this cause conflicts? Do me a favour and don't tell me I shouldn't be changing motherboards myself if I had to ask this question; I'll just do it anyways. (how else am I supposed to learn, lol). One other question; how do I remove a program; I tried remove program in control panel, which removed it from the list, but it's still running. It came bundled with MSN stuff, some kinda of tracker? (shows up as two folders in the windows folder, msnlogm, and msnlogs) It displays a window with the message to remove all MSN content plus or register it (no thanx), if I close it, my messenger closes as well. I've looked thru the registry for it, hoping to remove it, couldn't find it. I ran Asasin 4.0 on it, wouldn't remove it. I ran process kill on it, and the program just seems to restart in a few seconds, before I can try and delete it. I removed all traces of MSN programs, and cleaned the registry with CCcleaner, and still no luck. Adaware, Trend Micro, and Spyboot don't seem to even detect it, so what should I try next? Thanks in advance.

 

If you did as you said and replaced motherboard, CPU, and memory, then yes you would have conflicts. As you didn't go into specifics about your computer, whether it was a white box build or from a major OEM and whether or not you have a XP installation CD vs a Recovery CD, then I have no idea about whether you will have to replace the OS or not. If you have the XP installation CD, then it should be reinstalled on the new setup. If you have a Recovery CD, then you may have problems.

As for the two files that you mentioned trying to delete, I believe that both have .exe extensions. Try booting into Safe Mode, searching for them, and then delete them.

Hope this helps!