Will Win XP Still Work If I Swap My Motherboard?

My motherboard seems to be dead... I wanted to know if I buy a replacement motherboard (will likely be a different brand/model), would Win Xp still work or have to be reinstalled?

From what I remember when I installed Win XP years ago I never had to install any drivers for my motherboard. I guess Win XP had the generic drivers to run everything properly. As I never had to find/install anything after the initial OS install to make the motherboard fully functional. That was years ago... I assume if I bought a replacement board that requires specific drivers I may have to install those. But other then that the question remains would Win XP still work fine or consider it a major replacement/swap and break? (eg: stop working - requiring a fresh OS install)

I really don't want to reinstall Win XP on the new board. It took me years to get every setting, and program the way I wanted it to be.



Thanks

 

Hi my friend , with a new motherboard you take cd with drivers but Xp expired on April , it's better thinking about Windows 7 etc :wave

 

Super, I would recommend that you actually want to reinstall Windows, yes.

You might be able to replace the drivers and get a functional replacement with 'just' a motherboard swap, but it's an iffy proposition.

Your old motherboard used its SATA drivers for the hard-drive, OR it's using the older style IDE hard drives without additional SATA drivers.

The new motherboard (unless you can find an ASROCK 990FX Extreme4) will be all-SATA, most likely. And WinXP will require THAT new motherboard's SATA drivers from the very start - most likely.

But the only way to be sure is to try it. I can use the same video-card and thus maintain video-drivers - but those only load IF the Old Hard Drive is being accessed and read by the New Motherboard.

Performance will be certainly hindered by a mere swap instead of a re-load - that's why I'd counsel you to 'want' to do the ReInstall.

Also, be sure you have the installation disks for all of your useful WinXP programs, too. And yes, FREE SUPPORT for WinXP expires in April. The operating system will still be functional, though.

 

(I haven't looked at currently-available motherboards with IDE connectors in a good while.)

This is NewEgg's listing of their currently-offered AMD motherboards. The ASROCK A785GM has a floppy drive connector - which can be pretty important for XP installation's for SATA drivers, but this has the IDE connector too so I could use an older IDE hard drive and then install the SATA drivers later.

I had mentioned the ASROCK 990FX Extreme4 because it has both IDE and FDD connectors with the last of the AM3+ sockets, but NewEgg no longer offers that. Someone on Amazon might.

 

For the Intel motherboards, here's NewEgg's listing of IDE-loaded Intel motherboards.

ASROCK's Fatal1ty P67s are 1155-socket boards with both IDE and FDD connectors.

If my older motherboard had any of these motherboard chipsets and sockets, then I'd be limited to getting matching units and, even then, I wouldn't be assured that my old XP installation would work with these newer motherboards.

I know we've chosen the ASROCK 990FX Extreme4s for AMDs and the FATAL1TYs for Intels for the installations that needed XP machines into the future. Those are also good for upgrading to Win7 and Win8, although the Win8.1 drivers have been a little too flakey.

 

If we knew the make and model of the computer you're thinking of swapping the mobo on, it would give us more information to try and guide you.

 

Good morning ChristineBCW , you are alright but without update etc FREE SUPPORT for WinXP expires in April. The operating system will still be functional, though. have a nice day :wave

 

@mdonah & everyone

It's a vintage 2001/02 HP Vectra VL400 motherboard, which I stripped of all the old parts back when I got it in 2005. It now carries a 1.4Ghz Tualatin Pentium 3 processor (the first cpu ever to use a heat spreader on the die - & rarely known as the pre-design for the P4 cpu), Radeon 9550 Agp videro card, Two large IDE hdd's, Floppy, two LG super multi drives, two 256mb PC133 Sdram sticks, and a very expensive $300 soundcard that I use to this day for audiophile/progam purposes (yup the card is still worth that much). Believe it or not it has worked fine for years... All the new parts I added have worked flawlessly, and there isn't much lag. The cpu on it now is actually on the motherboard by way of a socket adapter. See these socket 370 motherboards couldn't take anything over 1.0Ghz back then, but I managed to find a rare adapter from Japan back when I built the system. That allows you to use a faster cpu. Turns out the bios got corrupted recently so now my board is unstable. It works, and sometimes it doesn't. By that I mean it will load fine, and other times it loads but then everything is super, super, slow to use. When it's working fine at times it reboots (or during the slow times too), and gives me a bios corruption beep from the motherboard. I have tried to do bios recovery on the board using a floppy and bios as per the mobo manual. But the motherboard seizes to boot up the floppy even when it's set to use the floppy first before the hdd's. I tried to put the exact thing on a bootable cdrom, and it fails to load that too. I'm thinking maybe it's a driver issue on the floppy/disk? I've even tried to load the normal floppy bios update and it won't start up. It reads the floppy disk then stops, and shows nothing on screen (recovery floppy did that too). In any case I have found a possible solution at www.bootdisk.com. If you go to that site the main page has a "Driver Free Disk For BIOS Flashing." It's my last hope, otherwise I need a new board, but not new as in a recent years release. New as in an old board that will take all of those newer parts I bought for the now unstable board over the years.

I figure some of you will wonder why I'm using this system. I'm a vintage electronics collector so to speak. & I have a great deal of respect for technology that got us here. Would you throw out the first light bulb ever made? The first tvs ever made? The first phones ever made? Exactly... So it's also in a niffty case as you can see below. Which is a pain and a half to dismantle. I don't see any bulging capacitors, and the battery hasn't ever lost the date/bios settings so I doubt it's a dead battery causing issues. Took me years since 2006 to get numerous programs tweaked the way I like, startup options in msconfig, registry settings, and most importantly my expensive sound card settings.

If anyone can help me diagnose why I cannot fix the bios please do so I need a hand. It's not a bios chip that comes off either, it's soldered onto the board. I need a way to flash it with the latest bios at the least. At worst I need to be able to swap it with the best old style motherboard (might as well buy the most upgradable/powerful board around), that will take all of the components I have except for the cpy and ram of course which I bet will have to change. I just rather not have to reinstall Win Xp. But if I do... It's got to be a motherboard so powerful that it's worth me doing so. I'll only spend all of that time redoing everything if I know it's got the fastest IDE speed, super fast cpu compared to my old one, and lots of ram space. Heck if someone had an HP Vectra VL400 system and desoldered the bios chip I'd buy it off you easily. I could easily swap my bios chips... Just have no idea who would have this board. I've tested everything as far as the eye can see. It's a corrupt bios that probably got that way during the ice storm that past the east coast last month. There were a lot of fluctuations in the city power (lights going off and on). I tried to keep my system unplugged soon as I got home then, but it had already gone through a couple of those. Only other thing I have not checked is the capacitors with a tester. But I doubt they're bad, and I don't know if it's worth getting a tester just for that when it may as well be cheaper to get a new board. Still want to try and flash the bios on the motherboard right now though. Somehow.

For goodness sakes here's the bios link if anyone can figure out how to make a working floppy out of it, or better yet cdrom: HP Vectra VL400 IP.01.08 Bios
(I'd gladly donate some funds to whomever can get it working via Paypal)

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/541/xl63.jpg

Thanks for all of your concern, I highly appreciate it! & so does my vintage system!
Got a sentimental attachment to it as well since it was the first computer I ever built.

:wave

 

BIOS Update Failure... hmmm... you're using a CPU that isn't accepted without an adapter, right? That could be one issue.

I might try to remove all cards plugged into the motherboard (except video), and try the BIOS update then. (Then, if the BIOS updated successfully, I'd let it reboot to the floppy - where the BIOS is at. Just let it boot to any OS. After that, power it down and plug the cards back and let it boot to Windows.)

As for your sound-card... if you consider moving it to an updated OS, then making sure it's software is just as useful will be important.

 

Found an MB for you, if you want to pay the piper. About $201.

http://www.cheappcupgrade.com/d982060009.html

 

I've used the CPU with the adapter for years without any issue at all. As for the cards, why would they even cause any issue when updating the bios? In any case I cleaned the entire system out with 99% isopropyl alcohol before I tried the aforementioned bios recovery/update. All cards should be working...

That's not my board if you were looking for a match. Also that looks like a generic picture of any old motherboard. It doesn't have a agp slot for my current video card on the vintage system. I greatly appreciate your help in this matter though. Thanks!

 

"Using" and "performing a BIOS update" can be very VERY different operations.

The idea of clearing out all cards except Video BEFORE a BIOS Update is to free the BIOS from any and all settings, interrupts, or System Call's for any other "attentions needed".

It SHOULD be unnecessary - on this Oh-So-Perfect-World in which we live. But since there WAS a problem, I was offering suggestions I've used to finally get what should be a simple BIOS update operation to succeed.

The BIOS Update is a VERY base-level function. Just about nothing is more base-level, in fact, and the BIOS is written for a VERY specific set of circumstances. "My CPU doesn't match my BIOS Settings Table" would be about the 2nd or 3rd 'check' that a BIOS Update will perform.

The BIOS is written to use ITS version of your CPU - not YOUR version of YOUR converter-and-CPU.

Hopefully, your Converter takes this into account and can offer satisfactory responses. But this first failure made me think of your 'extra special CPU' and its' perhaps unexpected responses.

 

Someone told me that a dying cmos battery can cause bios corruption issues. I wonder if there's any truth to that. He said to ignore the fact that the settings don't revert to default. But yet to pay more attention to the other fact that the battery is now over 10 years old. He suggested I buy a new battery and swap it, then reset all settings back to the way they were. I'll see if I maybe do this...

 

superstar...

Ran across this at ebay. I have no idea if this would be something you could possibly use in place of your current motherboard, but they are offered at a good price and in bulk should you care to get a number of them. The description claims there is an AGP slot:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/P5750-60101...881?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20db1ed309

:-o

 

That's crazy can't believe you found one from the same line! Unfortunately it's not the same model motherboard I have (HP Vectra VL400). But I'm wondering what the likelihood of this working would be without having to reinstall Win XP if I did a mobo swap. Again I have heard from a couple people I know that when they did a motherboard swap for a different board they never had to reinstall the OS and it worked fine. I don't understand why so many people have conflicting answers about it.

In any case I picked up some new CMOS batteries today. I'll take a video of my bios settings in the morning and then swap the batteries out. The old one is over 10 years old. So maybe the one person that said a battery swap could cure the corrupt bios issue is right. We'll see... If not then my last hope is that bootdisk.com (driver free) floppy disk that works with any bios update. Or the real final straw which would be to find the same board (hard to find), swap it, or delsolder/replace the bios chip.


Thanks for the continuous post people!

 

Good luck getting it sorted out. If worst comes to worst somebody has got to have the board you're looking for somewhere...

 

-> superstar

I had this very question. The consensus of the answers I got was 'Yes, if you have the same model of motherboard with the same BIOS'. As I was working with a pre-installed OS on an HP I was also told once 'but your recovery CDs may not work' (HP give you a one-off ability to make a copy of your OS onto CDs, in case you lose your HD)

Found it ! see this discussion on the subject from the HP forum (the place HP set up to save itself from providing proper support)- please read all the posts as some aren't relevant, some are
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Operating-Systems-Software-Recovery/My-wife-has-an-a1720n-that-has-an-old-tired-MB-I-want-to/m-p/2825413#M70990

Dumb_Question
14February.2014

 

Interestingly enough I bought a new CMOS battery and decided to go ahead and swap it with the 10 year old one on my motherboard. I left the old one out for at least 2 hours. When I went ahead and popped in the new one I turned the pc on. & the old settings were still present (with the exception of the clock being reset). Anyways I noticed the computer speed went up a bit (either that or I'm crazy - just a few seconds faster compared to when it was working normally believe it or not). It has yet to restart now or give off any bios corruption codes. I set the clock and compared the bios settings to those I had video recorded before removing the old battery.

Interesting... Anybody have a take on this?

Remember my motherboard was giving me a bios corruption beep code which is why I started this thread. Since I figured I may need a new board... Oh and btw yes I did unplug the system from the wall when I swapped the battery of course. Still no idea how it remembered the majority of important settings (minus the clock).

 

Meh, seems to work fine the first time. Had it on for a few hours. Then when you turn it off the first time, and reboot you get the 6 beep "Bios Corruption" code. This time I will software reset the bios settings within the menu. If that doesn't work I'll do the jumper switch reset. & if that finally doesn't work I'll try one last way I think I know of using a universal floppy disk that flashes all sorts of bios as long as you provide the bios update file. Other then that if nothing works my bios chip would prob be duff. I found a company that can flash a new chip and sell it to me for $14. But the inner legs of the bios chip are soldered inwards. I don't know if I can do that myself. They don't even pop up on the backside of the motherboard. They were literally soldered by machines.

 

EDIT...keep us posted. Posted the message below before I saw your new post...

*****

Great you got the board working and smart of you to follow through on the CMOS battery. I have basically no patience when it comes to batteries, so I probably would have bought another board and been out a wad.

Maybe that older board has a backup battery somewhere like a rechargeable. Never heard of it before, but I can't see how that could have happened without something supplying power for the settings to remain...

That's a cool old rig you have. Glad you were able to get the problem sorted out...

 

Thanks but the problem didn't stop there as you can see from my last two posts. I'm currently trying to clear the CMOS via the onboard switches. One thing that I found weird in my motherboards troubleshooting manual went something like this:

1. Disconnect the Pc from the wall
2. Move switch 1 up to ON position
3. Reconnect the Pc to the wall
4. Turn Pc on, it will reboot, wait for CMOS cleared message then turn off Pc
5. Disconnect the Pc from the wall
6. Remove the HDD
7. Move switch 1 down to the OFF position
8. Reattach the HDD
9. Reconnect the Pc to the wall
10. Turn on the Pc, it will start slowly because the configuration loads default values
11. Press F2 to enter SETUP, set everything, save, and exit

Why would the manual state that? I can't see any single way a HDD attached has anything to do with the CMOS, unless it still gives power to the board at a small level. Enough to allow the settings to remain intact. It's just so weird for me to read that. I didn't remove my hdd when currently following these steps. I just detached the molex power cords... Figured it can't be a great deal to remove the IDE ribbions too. Left it unplugged for 30 mins anyways so if there was any power in the drive whatsoever it should have left due to at least the molex cords being temporarily detached. I don't know I just find that one step weird. Let me know what you guys think.

I'll test to see if this manual CMOS clearing helps and post back. Hey this Intel link specifies (for who knows what board), that clearing the CMOS manually may solve bios corruption issues:

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/CS-034245.htm