Buster, you are telling us the big picture in chapters.
You said you wanted to reinstall Win 7.
Than you said you're upgrading your MB an CPU and that can turn out to be a complete different story.
Which MB and CPU you are putting on your computer? Aren't you replacing the memory as well?
New MB has to be configured in a way to be compatible with Win 7.
Skylake MB only has USB 3 and Win 7 doesn't has the USB 3 and new SATA drivers.
- Backup all your data.
For AsRock MB-970A-G/3.1 and Win 7 64 bits
On Bios Boot tab
- Disable Fast boot
- Enable CSM
- Launch PXE OpROM Policy, Launch Storage OpROM Policy, Launch Video OpROM Policy = UEFI
- Disconnect all other drives - Very important
- Boot with your Win 7 installation disk on UEFI mode
- Select custom (advanced) - drive options - delete all partitions - create new. Windows will create the necessary partitions and install.
Clean Install Windows 7
To save time on the updates:
MS releases SP2 for Windows 7
If I opt for 64-bit on the re-install, will that affect the data backed up on another HD, which was done under my current 32-bit version of Win 7?
Data = no, settings= some = yes
If you're buying more than 4G of memory, you must install Win 7 64 (Win 7 32 (any kind) can't manage more than 3.2 G of memory).
All win 7 32 programs also run on Win 7 64. Don't worry.
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