Want to mail me a motherboard with 8x agp slot and support for 4 512mb sticks of dual-channel pc3200?

Thanks
Schiz.

Actually, my real question is this:
I bought an HP system with XP Home preinstalled. I want to take what I can from this system and install it on a new motherboard in a new case. My friend says that when hooking up the old hard drive to the new motherboard, it won't recognize the OS since it was HP preinstalled. He advised I could only wipe the drive clean but then I would need a fresh copy of XP Home or Pro....is there any way around this?

Is this how HP and companies like that screw you in the long run?

I've never tried to use a drive from an HP with the OS still installed, so I don't know about that in particular, but I would tend to think he is correct since so much of an HP is proprietary. I know that trying to use the restore disc that comes with HPs and some other companies machines on machines other than they were intended will not work. You will also not be able to use the PSU from your HP(hope you hadn't planned on doing so)

Screwing you is just a bonus, the primary reason they do this is to ensure compatibility(or so they claim)

No it wont find the OS, or didnt for me anyways (I tryed this with an HP too). You'll need to backup whatever data you want to keep (thats on the HD) on to CDRs, then when the HD is in your new PC, format it and install WinXP

here is a guide that tells you how to make a windows CD from a recovery disk.

http://www.easydesksoftware.com/recovery.htm#ME

The recovery is partitioned on the hard drive itself. System didn't come with physical recovery cd's.

One more way they screw you in the end.

Argh.

A couple years back (when they still did use recovery cds) I did transfer a new motherboard and CPU into my old HP computer case. It was a close call in terms of clearance, and my case was a wired nightmare.

Basically in the end, I did have to reinstall with a different OS.

And yeah, that power supply was just enough for the system I had. When I transferred to the new setup, it just wasn't cutting it. Had to get a new one of those too...


Maybe you could just buy a new hard drive (pretty cheap nowadays) and then slave the old one to transfer all your important data before you wipe it.

I recently bought a HP laptop and it came with a booklet of 5 cd's that im supposed to use to restore the os to the original setup and I also got another cd that contained XP home edition. I used the XP cd and the serial from the back of my laptop to install XP on my custom built desktop without any problems, I even got to activate it:grinthumb

Scol, the question isn't whether the HP PSU will work, the problem with using it is that most HP PCs have a proprietary mobo/PSU. This means that there is a special connector that will not work on just any board, and just any PSU will not connect to the HP mobo. There are ways around this, but its not worth it.
Seems you must have gotten lucky on the particular model you had.