new mobo for desktop

[imation]

hi i have emachines T1840 celeron 1.8 640mb ram ati radeon 9250. i was wondering if i could buy a newer motherboard and processor. will i need to buy a windows xp disk to do a fresh install? or can i just put everything on and install the motherboard disks on my current OS? or just reinstall with the disk that came with my computer? thanks

 

[PC eye]

When you buy a new board that should come with it's own cd for drivers, softwares, and utilities for the make and model. The eMachines cds will be of absolutely no use if you swap boards out. If you were to buy a new board from eMachines that would be for a different model where it would likely have a different set of disks there. Swapping a board is considered a major hardware change. If you are going as far to buy another brand board and cpu this will make the recovery disk provided with the machine useless as well. You can find full version XP installation disks for under $90 at many online vendors with prices for being three years old and Vista coming out shortly. You will want to essentially build a new case if spending on a new board and cpu to upgrade out the current system.