Before installing a new motherboard can I go into device manager and remove the items that are for the current motherboard? Just looking into other ways so I don't have to format my hard drive. Brian

You don't have to reformat. Simply swap the board, then boot off the WinXP CD & do a "repair install" http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/...

My XP cd does not have any service packs on it. That is why I asked my question. I want to avoid all that if I can. Brian

Yes, You can do what you ask. Keep in mind that you will have to Reactivate Windows XP once you have completed the change over. I found the information below posted on this forum a while back. BEFORE you shut down for the last time on the old mobo,...Open regedit and delete the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum This way when you start up on the new mobo, windows won't be trying to find all the old hardware arrangements from the old system. It will instead find the new hardware addresses and build new driver database files, etc.You may have to point it to locations for some drivers, and will have to install drivers for the new mobo's chipset and features. Windows will rebuild the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum section, based on your new goodies.

"My XP cd does not have any service packs on it" Even if you delete the drivers & device references from your old board, I highly doubt XP will boot after the board swap...it will detect the hardware change & go to a blue screen. To fix it, XP will have to be reinstalled & a "repair install" is the way to do it without losing any currently installed programs or data. I've done this a couple of times myself with no probs, but I don't recall if SP2 had to be reinstalled or not. My original XP CD didn't include SP2 either, but I now have one that does. I take it you didn't "cash in" on Microsoft's offer for a free copy of SP2 on CD? http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/... Or you can download the Network Install version of SP2 & burn it to a CD so that you'll always have a copy: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/... OR you can download it, then slipstream it using a program such as "AutoStreamer" so that it automatically installs with XP. http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4... If your XP CD isn't a legal copy, it's not quite as easy to accomplish the above, but it can be done. We can't discuss such things in these forums though ;-)

JPW, do you mean delete everything in this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\ Brian

I don't think the suggestion by JPW will work. If I remember correctly, that "trick" is for earlier versions of Windows (95/98/ME). You may find your solution here though: http://www.windowsreinstall.com/ins...