I am building a new computer, however, I am planning on taking some of the parts from my old pc, such as ram and hdd. I have been wondering - what do I need to do with my hdd before putting it into a new pc? Do I need to do anything at all or do I need to reformat the thing or anything in that manner? If I do need to do anything with it how would I do it? Thank you!Do I have to wipe the hard drive and reinstall windows when I am changing the mobo, gpu,cpu, and psu?Mobo definitely requires a system reload. GPU doesn't. Power supply doesn't. CPU usually doesn't. But, since you are replacing your motherboard, then you need to reload windows regardless. A motherboard has a ton of onboard things that require specific drivers to be installed when loading Windows. The north/south bridge chipsets, the memory controllers, the USB chipsets, even IDE/SATA controllers need to be installed.
Note that, while you might be able to %26quot;get away%26quot; without a reload, as Windows will load up a generic driver for any %26quot;new%26quot; device it finds on the next boot up, you will always have an unstable system.... never can tell when it will lock up or simply under-perform because of an old driver still loaded.Do I have to wipe the hard drive and reinstall windows when I am changing the mobo, gpu,cpu, and psu?i changed my mother board once and had to reinstall the system. cpu is the sameDo I have to wipe the hard drive and reinstall windows when I am changing the mobo, gpu,cpu, and psu?Depends. If your going from an amd %26gt; amd or intel %26gt; intel and the chipsets are similar then you might be ok and just have to install some drivers for windows xp and windows vista. If I were you tho I would backup my files and not count on it being ok.
If you are running windows 7 there is a good chance you will be ok. I installed windows 7 on a 2nd hard drive on my old gateway computer amd anthlon x2(4 years old) and then when i went and built my new amd phenom x4 system (different mob manufactures and all) and put the windows 7 hd in, i booted right up, 7 went out on the net found everything it needed driver wise, rebooted and 5 min later i was up and running perfect! All my programs and files were there just like always! I was one happy camper.Do I have to wipe the hard drive and reinstall windows when I am changing the mobo, gpu,cpu, and psu?Yes, unless the new mobo specs are very close to your former mobo's specs, especially the chipset.
