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Upgrading hardware HELP
saurian333:
--- Quote from: acidblue0 on January 23, 2010, 11:13:00 am ---I went ahead and bought it. AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0GHz Quad + Asus M3A78-EM NIB
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320468626099&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT
--- End quote ---
OK...even if the quad-core doesn't do much for you, that's a pretty damn decent price.
acidblue0:
Yeah it is. I got my fingers crossed hoping the games I like to play will work on this cpu.
acidblue0:
When new MB and cpu get to me will I be able to just plug hard drive in and boot up? Hope I don't have to reformat
Gamester:
--- Quote from: acidblue0 on January 23, 2010, 07:54:56 pm ---When new MB and cpu get to me will I be able to just plug hard drive in and boot up? Hope I don't have to reformat
--- End quote ---
It won't be that simple. Since you're replacing the motherboard and going with a completely different type of CPU, there will be all sorts of drivers missing when you boot up. In fact, it may not even boot into Windows at all.
Any time I make a change as drastic as a complete MB & CPU swap, I always install a fresh copy of Windows. I've been doing this stuff over over 20 years, and I've just found it to be by far the cleanest approach. Time consuming, yes, but better in the end...
saurian333:
--- Quote from: acidblue0 on January 23, 2010, 07:54:56 pm ---When new MB and cpu get to me will I be able to just plug hard drive in and boot up? Hope I don't have to reformat
--- End quote ---
Oh...you're an upgrade virgin, huh?
Gamester is absolutely right. Best route is a fresh copy of Windows. If you just swap in the HDD, you'll be lucky if you can get into Windows. And in the event that you do, you'll have so many problems to fix that it's just not worth it. You could try to install over the top of the existing Windows, but I wouldn't put money on your other data remaining intact.
If you don't have a means of backing up your entire HDD, I would suggest getting another small HDD somewhere (60-100GB). Smaller drives can be found very cheap on eBay, and many online retailers. Use the small drive in the new system to install Windows on. Then you can plug in your current one as a secondary drive. That's the happiest medium between cheap/safe/easy.
Obviously the cleaner way is to back up any "extra files" (music, ROMs, etc.) from the current drive, then do your reformat/installation, and copy whatever you need onto the new installation.
Another possibility is to create a new partition on your current drive and move your extra files over there, leaving only Windows on the first one. When you reinstall Windows, you only need to format the one partition, leaving your data intact. However, that's only an option if you have more free space than your extra files will take up (need free space to create a partition).
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