UPGRADING to DUAL CORE

Maybe a dumb question but I can't get a straight answer. I am upgrading mobo,cpu,and ram from old (1998) single core amd 2500+, ddr ram, to amd 64 x2 and ddr2 ram. Question is can I just do the hardware upgrade w/o reinstalling everything(software/drivers,etc) or should I reformat and reinstall everything from scratch? and if I do reformat etc would upgrading from XP Pro x32 to XP Pro x64 be worth the cost of the os vs performance gain (if any)?
Thanks

 

in my opinion, i reckon u need to reinstall everything.
for the drivers, it might be different to the previous one.
and about the windows, it need to detect what kind of mobo and some of the hardwares.
so.... i would say reformat and reinstall drivers.

 

Hi, Hockalugie.

It's been awhile since I replaced mobo, CPU, and RAM all in one shot but I don't recall any major issues. However, those upgrades have been 16-bit to 16-bit, or 32-bit to 32-bit architecture (if I recall correctly). Dunno what you might run into with a 32-bit to 64-bit hardware upgrade.

Since you're thinking of a format/clean install as a possibility anyway, why not back up your data, software installation files, and peripheral driver installation files to another drive/DVD(s)/CDs first and then give the hardware upgrade a shot?

That's about as straight as I can answer.


EDIT: I expect you will need to contact Microsoft by phone and possibly explain what you did because so many hardware changes are likely to trip Windows XP's anti-piracy monitor. I expect you'll get a pop-up window displaying instructions and the phone number to call.

 

Thanks for the input. I've decided to do a clean install. Why risk having to do it twice. I still am curious about going to x64. Is there an big advantage to it or not? Any thoughts or experience would be appreciated.
Thanks again

 

Thanks for the link. Now I am undecided again! I'm looking for an excuse to go to x64 still.

 

The general tone for XP/64 - Not worth the pain and aggravation .... poorly supported at a driver and software level.
Vista/64 - More interest, currently from gamers. Only time will tell if industry backs this OS for 64bit driver/program support. The primarily advantage is running above 4GB memory, but requires close attention to MOBO/chipset/memory choices to achieve this obstacle. Don't quote me, but I believe you may need to use Vista Ultimate.

 

I use XP Pro and Vista HP and both are x64, and they fly compared to my older xp x86 (32 bit) OS. No problem with software or drivers so far (6 mos.). It's definitely worth it!

 

It's been a long time. But I've done the swap thing a couple of times. It actually works OK, if everything else is alright...like you don't have any viruses, etc. It does save a lot of time.

 

I think you should carefully check what software you need on your system, before making the choice of using a X64 OS
When all your needed software is X64 compliant its well worth the step to this OS, but again many software/games will fail on it.
For me the solution was installing both i an dual boot setup
In my experiance the X64 OS is most of the time faster