Format or Reinstall

[XChronoX11]

I have a dell computer that i recently began upgrading parts, one of which was the mobo so windows will no longer load right from the harddrive i still have. I also don't have a windowsXP CD either since it already had it installed, so my question is would i be better off formatting the harddrive (after slaving it to retrieve files) and completly installing a newly purchased windowsXP or can i purchase a copy of windowsXP and simply reinstall it without problems since the version on the harddrive was installed from a different CD/registration code?

[PrntRhd]

There is supposed to be a recovery utility to allow you to reinstall XP on the current hard drive in a hidden partition. You may be able to image the drive which allows the whole contents of the HDD to be transferred to the new drive.