Replacing failed motherboard

My old ABIT motherboard has failed and been replaced with another used one.

I still want to use my old hard drive and its software because some of the programs have been downloaded from the net and are not there anymore.

The old hard drive will not fully load XP and says I shall have to re-register.

Can I get round this by taking the BIOS chip out of my failed motherboard and transferring it to the replacement, thus making the replacement board have the same identity as the failed board.

I would hope then that my old hard disc and all the contained software would spring back into life again.

Is this likely to work please.

Matty

 

Motherboard Replacement using old HDD and software

Hi all

Found the solution to my replacing the motherboard problem.
My old XP machine works again.
Changing the BIOS over did not work but here is what happened and it must all be on the software on the old hard drive.
Ran up the machine with my old hard disc and replacement motherboard and after the WELCOME it said I must re register.
Then asked if I wanted to re activate or not.
Had clicked on activate before and got a green screen for some time so thought this was the end and had switched off.
However I left it for quite a while this time and it presented me with a set of choices including registering my details such as name, address , email etc – weather to re activate by telephone or internet.
Not having the internet connected I dialled the 0800- number on the screen and got Microsoft.
Meanwhile my screen came up with a long number which I had to key in on the phone – prompted by the girl’s voice at Microsoft.
She then relayed to me another long number which was 7 groups of 6 digits which I had to write down. They said keep this because it is now the activation code for my XP software.
I then had to type this from the keyboard into appropriate blocks on the screen and press next.
Straight away the machine fired up.

I may have missed something out on this description but it was not too difficult or I could not have managed it.

Hope this information may be useful for the future.

So Microsoft must still provide some good support for XP !!

Alan Matthews