Upgrading Hardware on Vista PC

At some point in the future I plan on getting a external HDD so I can make backups, I want to add an additional 2 Gigs of RAM to give a total of 4 GB. I also I want to swap this motherboard with a identical one and upgrade from a 400 watt power supply to something like a 600 watt.

I was wondering by doing any of this will I have to do a fresh reinstall of Vista or will it be ok?

 

why an identical motherboard?
none of the other changes will require a reinstall. but if you change motherboards, you should reinstall. Vista might recognize it as being installed on another computer, depending on the vista license you have.

 

What do you mean by "identical motherboard"? If it's the exact motherboard, I don't see why you would need to reinstall the OS.

But again, you could ghost it and make sure the ghost settings are set to utilize any processor and you could move the OS around to any PC

 

By Identical I mean I plan on replacing the current motherboard with another of the same make and model I have a Intel Schroeder Town G33 motherboard and I plan to replace it with another Intel Schroeder Town G33 motherboard. The reason I want to do so is because my computer randomly freezes and I want to eliminate the motherboard as a suspect. So far I tested memory, HDD, upgraded drivers, and Firefox and nothing stops the freezes the OS stops responding and I have to hard reboot.

I thought it was memory first thing I checked I used Memtest to scan memory in boot mode came up clean no errors. I scanned in Vista itself using Memtest again came up clean I will use the shareware version of Hot CPU tester to diagnose the motherboard I am expecting no errors. I have done everything I don't suspect to be my hardware but want to rule it out. I looked in BIOS and the power supply voltages reported are all pristine clean. I have Vista Home Premium 32 bit OEM.

As I look over my observations I am truly thinking the freezes are caused by corrupt system files. Although to the best of my knowledge my PC is clean from malware as I take security seriously. I did a SFC operation and it reported some files are damaged. But no events in event viewer points to this specifically and Reliability and Performance merely lists several "OS Stopped working" entries. I really need help looking over the logs and deciphering them. To see what files are damaged. It's strange but until the freeze actually occurs the system runs beautifully. No BSODs, no errors. Even after the freeze occurs I can still pull up Yahoo Messenger, I can still look at other windows currently opened with the exception of games. Just can't call task manager or open new Yahoo windows or the like. I can even navigate Windows Explorer just can't do anything that requires serious work for Windows.

 

have you checked your temperatures? you could have an overheating problem.

 

Yes, I run Core Temp in the background if anything it could get a little hotter. But CoreTemp reports temperatures well within the safety range.