Hey everyone, my motherboard recently died on me, so I decided to purchase a new one and upgrade my cpu as well. Only, I honestly did not do the research I should have and now realize that because my computer was made by a major manufacturer, in this case Acer, I may need to purchase a new OS. Acer didn't even ship recovery cd's with the comp, which I have a feeling from the reading that I've done wouldn't have helped me much anyway. So I cannot boot the system up. When I replace the motherboard and cpu what are the odds that xp will correctly detect eveyrthing and work properly? Will it harm anything by trying? And the last question is, would purchasing a Vista upgrade and using that to boot through work, or do I need to purchase the non upgrade new computer version, and in that case do I need to hook the hd up to my kids computer and reformat it?