I have a perfectly good compaq with a perfectly adequate AMD 3400 something and very nice ATI graphics. it runs on XP.

circuit city is offering an ACER with an amd 64 2x 5000+ for $400(and one can get ff miles with the purchase!!!). it has Vista on it.

is there an easy way or any way to swap operating systems?

You could image over over your old OS using Acronis True Image and Norton's Ghost. When the new system boots, it will hunt desperately for new drivers and will find many. Afterwards, you'll need to manually download some for the machine. If you are using a retail version of XP, you will probably need to revalidate the XP, but if it has been years since you last validated, Microsoft will either do it automatically or with a phone call. Tell them that you swapped mother boards if they asked.

Devistification is pain in the neck. I am going through it with an HP. I got most of the drivers sorted (without any help from HP whose website takes the Microsoft party line that Vista is better and we won't help you make a "mistake"). Some of the easy stuff was to locate the most similar XP machine they sold and download those drivers. I am still, however, without any sound because I can figure out the correct sound driver for this machine. I might have to buy a sound card and that will irk me.

I hate it when my sound cards irk me.

I have a 5 year old ACER downstairs. it has xp on it. if the same or similar sound and video "card", think i could just load that 5 cd package on the new machine? i have those OS cd's. i do not have any for my compaq, as the first try to make failed, and the machine would not allow a second set.

i do have acronis.

compaq is in the hp "family". do you have an amd or an intel processor.

this amd machine has an ATI 4370 audio controller, and runs on audio driver version 5.10.0.5840 and has a ACL658 ac97 codec(donno what that is)

i can send them to you, if i can find them. control panel says all the audio devices are mystery.

also appears to be on web with an ati soundcard driver search

I have a Compaq with an AMD and would love your sound drivers. I'll privately e-mail you my e-mail address.

I bought a demo box and they had it password protected. I booted the machine with Knopix and saw that the D drive appeared to be its recovery partition and copied that entire partition off to an external USB drive. I then used a copy of repartitioning program to redo the entire drive.

If you want to try and reinstall your old OS that is great. Five years worth of update packs didn't sound like a wonderful idea to me. Also I wasn't sure that I had all the original disks for all the programs so I ghosted my image and expanded it to the new drive size.

There is obviously more than one right answer to this problem. I just wanted to share my experience.

have you looked online at support.hp.com?
For example, I have a Compaq AMD desktop that has sound drivers available from http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/s...os=228&lang=en

To the OP - no you can not transfer XP to other machine. The license you have on your machine is an OEM license, restricted to that type of machine only.

When you try to image the OS onto another type PC it will not work because the hardware will be entirely different. And since it's an OEM license you won't be able to activate it.

thanks. not surprised. will add $100 to cost estimate, and buy a copy of xp on line.

Sortof. You may not be permitted to transfer the license to a new system, but the activation is not tied to the hardware such that it would fail to work. The license doesn't know that the manufacturer is Acer or HP or Dell.

recall buying some piece of OEM software and it was shipped with some usless chunk of printed circuit board to cover oem requirement.

That was an old requirement. You can now buy OEM copys of xp without any addtional purchaces.

If you are running vista business or ultimate you can switch to xp for free
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/dai...us_no_hack_you

"Well, technically that's a downgrade, but some users are more than happy to make the switch back, and now they can, so long as they own Vista Business or Ultimate. Said owners have always had the right to switch back to XP, it just has never been easy to do. But in June, Microsoft started allowing OEMs with Vista-activated machines to order XP discs for inclusion with new systems. Just in time too; starting in January 31, 2008, Microsoft will no longer provide XP to OEMs as a main OS option."