upgradeing a old computer

[paris1]

I want to upgrade a old hp pavilion 742n with a new mother board, cpu, memory, and video card.  I want to keep the operating system.   Hp help tells me if I change the motherboard I loose the o/s.  Is there any to do the upgrade and keep the system

Ticked in New Mexico

[Deerpark]

What operating system are we talking about?
I take the computer came with HP recovery discs?

[paris1]

sorry,  the o/s is xp home, no recovery disc just the recovery partition on the hard drive.

[Deerpark]

Yeah then you're going to loose the OS if you change the motherboard. The BIOS on a standard motherboard won't be able to run the recovery partition. And even if it could it would probably fail anyway since the computer doesn't contain the hardware the recovery system expects.
And the windows you already have installed on the hard drive is designed not to function if you make major hardware changes. This is an anti piracy measure.

So sorry but I have to agree with HP here.

[paris1]

thanks for the info, guess that is what I get for buying instead of building my own.

[robrowboski]

I think you could build a new one depending on what you using it for ,for under a grand easily