Well, the first step is to buy the parts, we may be finalizing it today, though we also talked to a local custom-build shop and we haven't gotten his quote. He sounded like he'd do the OS installation for us, or ensure our drive worked in the new system though he wasn't sure if it would work.
Well, the build is done. My dad now rocks a Phenom II 965 BE with 8 GB memory, and we did NOT have to reinstall Windows. Booted up, took a reboot to get the basics updated and then it was just a matter of getting the USB 3.0 and NIC drivers installed. Went WAY smoother than I expected and the whole deal took less than 3 hours from teardown start to using the PC.
We recently did 3 mobo swaps, 2 of the swaps were CPU's as well.
Windows 7 64bit and 32bit loaded up just fine, took a couple of re-boots and everything works great.
all 3 had to reactivate windows, online activation worked fine.
Q6600 and Asus P5Q Pro 8GB DDR2 to an i7 870 Asus P7P55D-E and 8GB DDR3 - Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
Athlon x2 4200+ Asus board and 4GB to an AMD Phenom II 1090T Hex Core Asus mobo and 8GB DDR3 - Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
Asus to Gigabyte board - Windows 7 Home Premium 32bit
Thanks again for the push to give it a try, this has DEFINITELY sold me on Windows 7 being the best that MS has produced to date.
I also must give props to Newegg, they will forever get my business. I ordered the parts for the build at 1:30 PM on Dec. 23, the order was out the door THAT DAY, from the NJ warehouse, it got to me near Albany, NY by 1:30 PM on Dec. 24 (that's on UPS but still GREAT).
Not to mention that most builds these days are "slap it together and hit the button" simple, everything seemed to be detected properly, BIOS configured the processor correctly and it worked on the first boot.
So, when you install a new mobo and decide not to reinstall W7, all Windows 7 does is rebuilds the device registry and deactivate any drivers which are not needed anymore???????
I am thinking of doing that sometime, since it works fine, it should then work for me. Once it works, all i would have to do is get rid of the drivers which are not being used anymore. Would it do any harm in keeping the deactivated drivers there?
It will probably have to be reactivated with Mikeysoft. I had to do that when I replaced my motherboard last week and it was an exact replacement for a failed Intel DP35DP motherboard. Nothing else changed but it still needed reactivation. I had to use the phone number and call the automated activation. I had to read them the key numbers and they gave me new numbers to key in.
We had to reactivate Windows but it didn't require a call. My dad has a retail Upgrade disk.
He hasn't complained, yet, so it should be OK to just leave it as Windows 7 puts it when it reconfigures.
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