I have a motherboard in a emachines desktop that went bad and what im WANTING to do is swap a motherboard from my COMPAQ. Both motherboards have the same PROCESSOR, memory and look identical (micro ATX) except for different brand names. Will I have any problems with this swap? I dont care if the emachines reads Compaq durring startup. Will I have to make any changes at all? Both machines running XP home. THANKS in advanceFirst, I have to say that I wouldn't do it.
Although, Windows XP is pretty good at recognizing new hardware, so it might work just fine. Chances are that the motherboards need different sets of drivers that tell the OS what to do with the mobo and what the mobo should do with everything else. If these drivers aren't the first thing to be installed, it will possible not boot windows.

My recommendation? Backup all the data on the hard drive (put it into another computer and copy your files), make the swap, and reinstall windows.
I went ahead and ordered one from tiger direct. I figured that would be alot easier than robbing peter to pay paul. Thank You for your reply, I kinda figured I would have a problem trying to boot windows after doing that. Does the eMachine still boot ? ? ?

If so there is a method ( a bit complicated ) to swap MBoards and still have XP boot normally and SAVE you some grief ...

Let us know.