I posted a message with a few questions regarding win xp's hardware settings and some of you started talking about piracy and my post was removed, that was bad, I really needed those answers and I *always* pay for my software! I was asking that because I will upgrade my pc soon and I need to know, so would you please help me? I have *no intent* of running the same copy of windows on 2 different machines. And as far as i know i'm the only Bruno around here with a .br host so any other posts with my name just aren't me. To the questions now: I have a K7 600 on a Asus MoBo, I'm planning on upgrading to a Soyo Dragon Plus and a Athlon XP processor, I'm not going to upgrade my hard drive, so what I want to know is, will I need to reformat and reinstall windows when I do this upgrade or it will detect the changes and be as good as a fresh install? As I tend to reinstall windows here a lot I posted a message about it and got some good suggestions for not having to reconfigure it all over again one of them is: - Reformating, doing a fresh install and exporting my whole registry before I install any additional software, so I can import it when I reinstall windows and my settings will be there. So I ask: Is the XP's hardware information inside the registry? Because I will go to a lot of work for tweaking XP to the best I can so I wan't to know if I will be able to use this exported registry after upgrading my computer (and after doing a fresh install of windows on the upgraded pc of course). That was what I wanted to know from the beginning, so please, any help is appreciated. Please don't send any answers by e-mail because I don't have an e-mail client installed right now. Thanks Bruno

Ummmm i THINK i know what your asking. Ok first thing.....in my experience......i have an Epox 8KTA3+pro mobo and recently upgraded a 1.2G Thunderbird to an AMD XP1800+ cpu. Now i had no problems with the upgrade. I used the same HDD and i didnt reformat or re-install.....it would have been nice but i couldnt be bothered basically! Everything works fine.....absolutely no problems at all. Obviously it wont be as good as a fresh install after the chipi replacement because windows has been "used". Not sure if thats what you were asking? Second part. Im pretty sure i know what your talking about in the second part of your question. Like you i dont want to forget all the XP reg tweaks ive done in the past few months so what i have done is create a reg file and everytime i do a tweak i modify that regfile to include the new reg change. Then when you do a fresh install all you have to do is run the reg file.....badabing! All tweaked! I prefer not to export reg file then import....too risky.....i just create the reg file as i explained above. Hope that helps :-)

You can export the registry, but you better have all the rest of your programs in the same place as before or it won't work. Also you need to be adept at registry editing, as you will have to go and edit a lot of information that doesn't pretain anymore. I really think you should just back the most important stuff up on CD, then put the HD in the coputer and let it slowly build from there. The worst case you will either have to re-activate it with a phone call, or reformat and reinstall AND maybe and maybe not have to call that one in. I used a small 8.4 GB hard drive and set up my windows 98 then ME on it and got my programs and destop the way I wanted it. Put back in my favorites, address book, etc etc and upgraded to XP on it. Went pretty well, then I migrated the info over onto my 20GB HD in the C drive, leaving the D,E, and F intact. At first it didn't recognize F, then next reboot it didn't recognize D.. but after it settled down and found all things it needed to find it works quite well now. BTY it that old 8.4 MB even booted to XP when I put it in my old computer case using a socket 7 processor and all different configurations. Then I re-formatted it ( the 8.4 drive) and put my old win ME on it. So I was surprised that it made the transition from an Abit KT7A based machine with AGP, etc etc to a machine that runs on a socket 7 CPU, with just a simple 2MB PCI video card. Could be that both motherboards are VIA chipset and that makes some difference. If that's the case then hmmmm.

For me the problem of creating a reg file all by myself is that I don't know where are some setting stored in the registry, stuff like folder and service settings. --------------- You can export the registry, but you better have all the rest of your programs in the same place as before or it won't work. Also you need to be adept at registry editing, as you will have to go and edit a lot of information that doesn't pretain anymore. ---------------- About that, I would export the registry file before I install any programs, that is right after I install and configure windows, so I think that would not be an issus, would it? And what about the hardware settings, are they IN the registry or somowhere else? Thanks Bruno

ahhhhhhhh i see what you mean now......thats a tricky one and unfortunately im not sure of the answer! Give it a go.....worst comes to worst you have to go look up all your tweaks and services again off the net :-)

This information was from a link that KTTD offered some time ago, but I don't really know if it works. If you ever have to reinstall XP, just copy wpa.dll after you activated the first time. It is located in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 folder. Now if you reinstall Windows XP again, just copy the file back and you're up and running again. Sorry I don't have the actual link.