My mother in laws computer had the motherboard fry so i am going to install a new one. How can I use the same hard drive without formatting the OS and all the information off of it? Ive heard of a program called hotswap will that work? and how would i use it?
all depends. If the other computer was a name brand like Dell or something then the OS will usually only work well with that computer. Like I built a new PC and used the hard drive from my Dell with the Windows XP that came with the Dell. It worked but had a lot of error messages that would pop up, especially with internet explorer. So i had to get a new copy of Windows XP Pro and install it. Luckily i had other hard drives so i could transfer all the info off the one with the OS to the others, then format the one with the OS clean and re-install the new Windows. The best way is to have two hard drives. It should at least work well enough for you to get loaded up and transfer the information you want to save to a blank hard drive. You may get lucky and the OS will work just fine. You can transfer stuff with either a program you buy, like a backup utility or drive clone program. Or just simply use windows where you highlight a folder, then on the top menu bar go to Edit->Move To Folder and move the folder to the blank drive.
If you install the same exact motherboard there will be no problem, but if you install a different model number then the issues you mainly run int will be driver issues with the motherboards chipset and PCI drivers if you have patients and time you can get it to work, but it will never truly be right until you format the HD and start from scratch.
