Good News
 

I got the new motherboard, cpu, and ram today

and when I hooked it up to the hard drive with all the
programs and games on it, I had no problem with it
they all stayed on, didn't have reinstall anything

This is no surprise as it should for the most part

Yeah, everybody I asked on here said it wouldn't work and
you should just install a fresh copy of windows

Well you should as you could have conflicting driver issues, there is no guarantees one way or another

Usually it works....to an extent. I always do a format with new hardware changes. Perhaps this would be a good time to invest in a backup scheme?

yup it works most of the time with 7 just did it myself today. I never tried xp.

All the drivers installed perfectly, everything is running smooth, all my programs work as do my games