I'am gonna be replaceing my motherboard and cpu soon, I was wondering if replacing those things will effect my operating system and such. Will I have to reformat? Any suggestions?

If you are using XP then in general you would have to run a Clean Install and then reactivate through Microsoft.

Our MOD brain_damage also posts this idea:

Originally Posted by brain_damage

I've done this and it worked fine

Before you swap out the current motherboard go to device manager and select the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller and select your current storage controller. Right click, select update driver and select install from a list or specific location. Click don't search I will choose the driver to install and select the standard dual channel IDE controller.

This will prevent the inaccessible boot device blue screen. I have done this multiple times on different platforms with no problems.

Also I found that booting the first time with the new motherboard is best done in the Safe mode where XP will install the drivers it needs and at the same time you can install the new motherboard drivers from its CD.

This saved me doing a repair or a reinstall of XP. My whole system came right up and worked great and very stable.

Originally Posted by jephree

If you are using XP then in general you would have to run a Clean Install and then reactivate through Microsoft.

Our MOD brain_damage also posts this idea:

I'am also replaceing the motherboard and cpu because one of them went bad, to the point where my computer doesnt even send a singal to my monitor. That problem is in a whole other post. But i cant get into windows at this point.

If you are replacing your components with the same ones the NO you dont have to do anything. On the other hand, if you are replacing you mobo with a different make/model then you DEFINATELY want to do a fresh install. You can go into a "Recovery" install so you dont loose your settings but I highly recomend a fresh install...

Originally Posted by surjer

If you are replacing your components with the same ones the NO you dont have to do anything. On the other hand, if you are replacing you mobo with a different make/model then you DEFINATELY want to do a fresh install. You can go into a "Recovery" install so you dont loose your settings but I highly recomend a fresh install...

So what happens when i replace my motherboard and cpu with differnt models, will it boot up and load xp? How would i fresh install it? I'am curious how the process would work.

You need to run a Clean Install of XP.

There is a good guide here:

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html