Will swapping motherboards in a store bought PC work with the existing Windows?

Martingale00

Martingale00

New Member
Hello all, I have an old HP Pavilion with an Athlon 3800+. I have a cheapo ECS motherboard with a 4600+ and DDR2 sitting around I'd like to put in it. If I put this motherboard in my HP and just plugged the hard drive up would it work or would Windows think I swapped the HD to a new PC? I know the store bought computers have different rules then the retail version of windows so I'm not sure if this will work without throwing up red flags with Microsoft. Can I make this upgrade to my PC? Thanks.
 
Sure you can put the new MOBO in the PC with the new RAM.

But you would have to put XP back on, You'd have to Format.

It would cause problems with simply swapping it over and leaving all the stuff on the HDD like it was with the old MOBO.
 
Usually you can change almost everthing hardwarewise, but a motherboard replacement, unless the same chipset/board will force you to reinstall.
 
Oh, okay...so I'd have to format and reinstall. I was hoping you could plug-and-play the HD into the new motherboard but I had a funny feeling that it wouldn't work. I don't have the Windows disk for the HP, I think it was just on a separate recovery drive. I think it's one HD that's partitioned though, will it let me format just the "C" drive and not the "D" drive that's the recovery console? Also I know have to access that recovery console from the HP BIOS but with a new motherboard I don't know how to access it.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the replies guys. After further thought I am not going to risk screwing anything up and just save the 4600+ for a future build. Thanks everyone.
 
Just for the record I just swapped motherer boards in a PC and it has worked fine I just needed to reactivate not reinstall. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top