I found out the hard way twice before that Windows XP will have a fit if you change too many critical components due to it's crappy piracy protection methods. The hardware I am upgrading is the Motherboard, CPU and Video Card which will obviously make WinXP have a fit and refuse to boot properly.

I am wondering if anyone here knows a way around this? I don't much like the idea of having to wipe the drive clean of everything and start new, re-configure, re-download, re-install, repeat etc....

EDIT: Oh and incase it is important I am using Windows XP Home with Service Pack 1 intergrated.

P.S. Luckily my brother who will be getting my old hardware is running 2k and shouldn't have this problem heh heh.

This post has been edited by Chesso: Jul 27 2006, 11:39 AM

Just changing the motherboard will wreak havoc since it's a whole new chipset. Try contacting Microsoft here and tell them about your situation. They should be able to let you activate it again with this new hardware setup. I did hear of a method "around" this, but due to the fact that it can/will be used illegally by others, I will not mention it. Call Microsoft instead...they can help you with this issue.

So who's going to use this hard drive now? You or your brother? If you are keeping it, you might have to reinstall Windows. Either way, you will have to reinstall since you are changing the motherboard and cpu there. I have seen cases where Windows will crash on a user constantly due to the fact that they have incompatible chipset drivers. Not sure if you can uninstall the old motherboard chipset drivers and install the new ones without reinstalling Windows.

Oh yeah, Didn't think about the motherboard drivers and such.

Hard drive? You mean the old components? I'm giving them to my brother.

Yeah, I mean the hard drive itself. Just asking because you said this earlier:
But then at the end you said you were giving it to your brother

So in your case, it wouldn't matter then since you will end up reinstalling everything again anyway. Just get Microsoft on the phone before you install it on the new hard drive and they will probably provide you with a new keycode or maybe reset your current keycode's hardware configuration.

Oh no not the hard drive lol, I meant the hardware I am replacing (motherboard, cpu and graphics card).

I would seriously consider upgrading to Service Pack 2.0 Many common applications require service pack 2.0 in order to work. I have run into the same problem as you have with regard to changing hardware, and the Microsoft recommended method is to change only one component at a time, rather than altogethr. Clearly if you have just bought a replacement hard drive, then Windows should have no problem reactivating, however as somebody else has pointed out replacing the motherboard will definitely require reactivation, and the best way to do this is to call Microsoft.

I was doing a reinstall for a friend and Microsoft were happy to reactivate the pc over the phone I had built for him.

How To Move WinXp SP2 to Another Motherboard

A full automated prcedure to move winxp from one hardware to another can be found at this link:
http://rapidshare.com/files/18172527/WinMBoardMig.zip

It works ONLY on WINXP sp2;

The soft takes care of things as hal detecting and change; also takes care of adding critical drivers and modify the system registry hive to prepare windows to found all hardware on next boot;

you can sysprep prior to run this util;

then you can deploy with one image for any motherboard

You must run winpe or bart pe on target motherboard with the target disk (with old os on it) installed in the motherboard

Oh cool, thanks for that.

I will give that a try when I finally get my hardware upgraded.

I planned on getting it done awhile ago but other stuff keeps popping up as it does, ahhh what a pain.

P.S. This method has been used sucessfully a few times?????