replacing motherboard

Guys, I'm planning to change my motherboard soon (defective ports and still USB 2.0) to a more recent motherboard. Coming from windows 7, I understand that replacing the parts would require a reinstall of the OS but maybe it will be a different case for win10. Just wishful thinking.

Thanks in advance!

Install windows7 in the new MB, try to activate, if it doesn't, use phone activation, then you can upgrade to Win 10.

It's always advisable to reinstall your OS with a new motherboard. Only way to get around it is by installing an exact copy of the same motherboard, although even then it's a good idea.

That's what I thought too. I was hoping that win10 is a little bit different from the previous OSes. But oh well. I need to reinstall my OS this weekend. Thanks everyone!

What you should do is for the Hard Disk Controller in device manager, change it back to Standard first before you clone the hard drive and swap the motherboard, otherwise it will result in a BSOD on bootup. With that method, no reinstall of the OS is needed as you will just boot up and need to get all the drivers correct for the new motherboard while removing the drivers for the old motherboard.

Hi,

What you should do is for the Hard Disk Controller in device manager, change it back to Standard first before you clone the hard drive and swap the motherboard, otherwise it will result in a BSOD on bootup.

Really ?

I vaguely remember something about a OOBE command line you'd run, then back up and shut down.
On the new system Windows would then update all with the drivers it takes to run on the new system.
Still, I feel the best way is to just do a fresh install.

Cheers,

EDIT: Found what I had in mind :

Hi,



Really ?

I vaguely remember something about a OOBE command line you'd run, then back up and shut down.
On the new system Windows would then update all with the drivers it takes to run on the new system.
Still, I feel the best way is to just do a fresh install.

Cheers,

EDIT: Found what I had in mind :

That was how I did it with XP and earlier. Not sure about 7 and newer. It's too time consuming to do a fresh install especially when there is a lot of software installed, some that haven't been made anymore... I've upgraded this way from Win95 all the way to XP without problems as I always change to a better motherboard and new better CPU along with new I/O cards. It was always the HDD Controller not shown as Standard IDE that caused the BSOD. This was before the OOBE method existed as even the article shows Windows 8 so it probably didn't exist before Windows 8. Otherwise, I'm sure one can just clone the HDD and use that restore to a different system method, it's called ReDeploy in Macrium Reflect.

Hi,

It was always the HDD Controller not shown as Standard IDE that caused the BSOD.

In the days of early SATA drives running in legacy mode, yes.

Otherwise, I'm sure one can just clone the HDD and use that restore to a different system method, it's called ReDeploy in Macrium Reflect.

That would be the easiest way and I suspect Macrium does exactly what I described in the earlier post, namely forcing Windows into Audit mode.

Anyhow, I'm too much of a coward to fiddle with all that and I've always done bare metal installs on new hardware.
Installing using a relatively fast USB 3 drive it's all pretty fast nowadays IME.

Hopefully all works out well.

Best,

Believe me, SATA drives may have existed but those days, it was still PATA. LOL.

It seems with later versions and newer drive imaging or cloning software, it can restore on different hardware so probably it's what you said it would do. I never do clean installs because I don't have the installers for some of the software and even if I did, the downtime would be too long and costs $$$ as I couldn't trade or watch investments... It's not the OS that takes time, it's installing all the software all over again as the data dates back almost 30 years.