Windows 7: Upgrading Motherboard. Is a reformat required?

Hello guys.

As you can see, I'm planning on upgrading my motherboard from a gigabyte a75m-s2v to an ASUS F1A75-V EVO motherboard since it seems to have a better overclocking potential with the UEFI bios.
Now.. I don't really want to lose my data on my hard drive as I do not have another drive to transfer all my stuff into at the time. My question goes around what should be done when doing a motherboard swap, it's hard to think it would be as simple as just changing it, as the old one installed all the drivers from it into the hard drive. Should I uninstall them separately before the swap?



Activation is not a problem, a friend of mine gifted me a MAK key for windows 7 Professional,Ultimate/Enterprise. But my main concern is the loss of data, or repercussions of swapping a motherboard, and not formatting my drive for a clean install.

Bringing up the thread~

There are 2 schools of thought on this subject; the first being that you will be OK just dropping the existing OS in as is and the second reinstalling the OS. I belong to the second category.

If you're not sure, just try it. Be sure to make a backup of any data that you don't want to lose first. If it works, all well and good. If not, reinstall (which is what I would recommend anyway).

What would be the pros, and cons of both situations?

if you reinstall windows you will avoid any driver complications down the road but you lose your data if you dont back it up, if you dont reinstall there might be complications because you are changing motherboards but also moving makes of motherboards and they might not like each other(driver wise)

There's a middle ground. Check out the sysprep utility. One of its uses is to genericize an existing Window installation to be installed across diverse hardware. Basically, it removes driver.

Whatever you do, get a backup drive and imaging software (or use the built-in Windows 7 imaging). Don't do anything as major as what you're considering without a backup. The chance for misadventure is much too great.

Thank you for your replies.
Should I deactivate any programs that required activation? Such as office, or several game add ons that required activation?

I's a good ideas. As far as I know, there is no deactivation for MS Office. The only software I've used that has explicit deactivation is Adobe Photoshop CS5.

The problem is you don't know the chances of success if you don't do a clean install.

If you don't do a clean install and spend an hour troubleshooting, that's a success.

If you don't do a clean install and spend 3 or 4 days troubleshooting, that's probably a failure. At what point in those 3 or 4 days do you throw in the towel and do a clean install?

Looks like both boards have the same chipset, so maybe you won't have much trouble. Windows 7 can be very forgiving.

If they have the same chipset, your chances of success are high. However, with any major system change, you should always have a backup of your data "just in case". This way, you are fine no matter what happens with the new board. If the swap doesn't go smoothly, you can wipe the drive and do a clean install, knowing your data is safe.

For me personally, the clean install process takes me about 2 hours. I would always go that route just to ensure the system gets the newest drivers installed.

As for your key, technically, you aren't legitimately allowed to use that key unless you are associated with the organization who purchased it. Take that as you wish, but there may be a time where it stops working or won't reactivate, and you'll have little recourse except to buy a new key.