Changing motherboard without reinstalling Wndows 7 Pro

Britton30 said:

You will have to install a LAN driver for Windows Update to start, otherwise there'll be no net connection.

Would that be covered in Paragon or would I have to install those via flash drive/DVD after Paragon is done and I am booted into Windows?

Britton30 said:

You'll have to boot to w7 and use your motherboard's driver disk for the LAN driver. You can also visit the board's support site and download it to put on a media of your choice.

Thanks. Already got them downloaded to a USB drive. MSI should supply me with a disk as well.

gregrocker said:

What is unclear about what I wrote here?

gregrocker said:

PAR disk does it all. It may prompt for SATA drivers but most likely not. WHen you start up Win7 it will change out drivers in a cascade you can monitor by clicking on the driver loading animation in System Tray. Do the requested reboot when it finishes.

Make sure Automatically deliver drivers via Windows Update (Step 3) is enabled and run all rounds of Important and Optional Windows Updates to completion. This should provide any newer drivers and relevant patches for the hardware. None should be skipped - only Bing and Essentials can be hidden.

I would not import any drivers not still missing in Device Manager after doing all of that, unless issues arise pointing to a driver. Win7 is the authority on its drivers, not an outdated driver disk.

Sometimes it's necessary to run Startup Repair - Run up to 3 Separate Times
after confirming the Active partition is System Reserved or C, to repair boot issues.

In addition put your Network adapter in your backup so you can install it to get online and do the Updates.

Still a bit confused on the bold part. If Paragon can't find my HDD due to a missing SATA driver I am out of luck?

Did you read the first paragraph? It dealt with this possibility specifically.

Who said anything about PAR not being able to find a HD? I've never seen it happen yet.

If it prompts for SATA driver then provide it, but that is so rare I can't remember it.

The paragraph you bolded later explains what to do if any Updates are still missing after running all rounds of Updates. Do this exactly like I wrote. I understand old XP habits are hard to break but this is a new generation OS which provides its own drivers.

Going to bump this as I need some help. First of all, I am in Windows 7 after my hardware swap and my hardware seems to be working fine. Paragon did its thing rather quickly (about 2 minutes total).

Everything else seems to be working fine at the moment (Windows 7 downloaded a lot of drivers, all successfully installed but one PCI card) except for one issue.

Every time I start Windows up, there is a slight pause after the Windows logo/animation and each time I get the following message:

Setup is preparing your computer for first use

Windows then loads fine. How would I go about resolving this issue?

Try method one here: Fix "Setup is Preparing Your Computer for First Use" on Every Reboot - Help Desk Geek

I did the registry edit. The good news is that it seems to work going by the now shorter time it takes to load. Though another odd issue occurs. After the Windows logo/animation appears, my monitor starts switching to analog mode before finally finding HDMI again. When it finishes I am on the desktop.

Never had this issue pre-registry fix. I did export a copy of my unmodified drivers just in case.

Make sure you have the latest driver for your monitor from WIndows Update, along with all other Important and Optional Updates after enabling Automatically deliver drivers via Windows Update (Step 3).

Check your monitor settings.