Barebones out of Dell and O/S

Hi,

My motherboard and video card of my personal computer fried during finals week at college, and it looks like it was the result of an internal power surge. I checked my hard drives, and they are all right, but I have not tested my processor or ram. I have a Dell Dimension 8300, and I think I have decided to build a barebones instead of replacing it with an expensive Dell mobo, mainly because this will give me better options in the future as far as upgrading goes.

However, one of the guys at a local computer store that I will be getting parts from claims that when I install the hard drives, my O/S will no longer work. I upgraded with a legal Win XP Pro cd. Does this overwrite the OEM nature of the original O/S?

I am just trying to determine what my best options are. I am glad that I still have all my files, its just now a matter of determining how I am going to get a machine back and running?

Suggestions are welcome.

bbbco

 

I think what your local computer store guy was getting at is that XPdetects all the hardware on a PC and when the OS is registered it is on the basis of that hardware. Also if you build the HD into a new PC with totally different hardware all the drivers previously loaded for the old system will be wrong for the new hardware.

You certainly can use the HD again but it would be best to first slave it onto another PC so you can get any data that you want off of it and then reformat it so whenyou put it into the new PC and reload XP it can find all the new hardware and load the correct drivers. Oh and you'll still have to reregister the thing with MS.

 

If you upgraded with a legal copy of Windows XP Professional, I'm pretty sure it should be fine, as long as it wasn't an OEM copy of XP Pro. It certainly won't mess up anything to try it. If anything doesn't work right, you can always try Yargwel's idea. No sense in formatting the drive if you don't have to

Good luck!

 

Yeah, thats what I'm thinking.

I know that my XP Home was OEM, but I upgraded with a non-OEM legal version of XP Pro.

Any ideas on whether this will definitley cause a lot of issues where I should reformat?

Thanks,

bbbco