Windows XP Boots After New Build?

[EXCellR8]

Alright this has me kinda confused. I finished building my new computer tonight and I was eager to power it up just to see if everything worked okay. I turned it on and was pleased to see that it appeared my hard work paid off. Everything ran just fine and I got no beep codes or anything. Settings in BIOS checked out so I saved and let the system restart. I left the room for a minute or two and came back to see the computer sitting at the Windows XP log on screen... weird. I logged on and everything was fine, aside from a few "New Hardware" dialog boxes. I did a complete mobo swap among other things so this struck me as a bit odd.

My question is, should I just leave the current install of Windows XP alone and do some driver replacement or should I bite the bullet and do a complete reinstall? I might just reinstall the OS anyways and start off fresh again but I wanted to see what others thought of this. I've never encountered such a thing w/ my computers before so I'm confused as to what to do. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!!

NOTE: I swapped an Abit NF7-S (2.0) w/ an ASUS P5N-E SLi mobo

 

[gbhall]

A different motherboard would always call for a 'repair' installation of Windows at the very least, but in most case will require a complete re-install. You seem to have been lucky.

This is assuming from your slightly vague description of what you have done that you are actually moving a pre-installed O.S. from one machine to another, or a new motherboard in an old PC. Either way, most of the hardware is the same, only the motherboard and possible processor has changed?

One of the benefits of a re-install is you could do it from a Windows with SP3 already slip-streamed into it. Do research how to do this - it will pay off.

 

[EXCellR8]

I've had this install of Windows XP (SP2) on my primary hard drive for almost a year. I did reuse this hard drive in this new system along with one other and a new 500GB. As far as hardware is concerned... the only components I reused were the 2 hard drives (one w/ XP installed), my two optical drives, and my Sound Blaster card. The CPU, mobo, RAM, and video cards have been swapped. I dunno how the system actually runs but I might just do a little driver tweaking and see if I can hold off on the complete reinstall. I spent a good 4 hours the other night backing my stuff up to prepare for the new install and now the machine acts as if nothing changed after being rebuild, bizzare.