Make Windows 7 bootable after motherboard swap

Make Windows 7 bootable after motherboard swap, or bootable after swapping hard drive to new machine. Software described Paragon P2P Adjust OS.


This procedure describes how to do it. Procedure can be used in case of:

• Windows 7 Installation - Transfer to a New Computer doesn't work.
• You forgot to SYSPREP.
• You can't SYSPREP because your motherboard died.
• You simply don't want to use SYSPREP.

1. Download "Paragon Adaptive Restore 2010" from Paragon Adaptive Restore 2010 on my DROPBOX.
2. Burn the ISO to CD/DVD using Windows Disc Image Burner or ImgBurn.
3. Set CD/DVD as first boot device in BIOS.

Do the following:

1. Boot the computer from Paragon Windows PE 3.0 based CD/DVD.
2. Accept the end user license agreement, otherwise you are not able to use the tool.
   
3. Launch P2P Adjust OS.
   
4. Select the operating system you need to adjust to your new hardware.
   
5. Choose whether you want to add third-party drivers or not, and the way to do it.
   
6. If you chose "Adjust the OS to the new hardware automatically", the P2P Adjust OS Wizard will automatically accomplish all the necessary actions.
   
7. The only thing that might need your interaction is to specify additional driver repository.
   
8. At last, choose "Yes, apply the changes physically" and then restart your computer after operations are done. Do remember, you cannot interrupt the process or undo the changes.
   

Compelete pdf manual: Paragon Adaptive Restore 2010 on my DROPBOX.

Just before the OS adjustment, you can additionally:

   Warning

Sometimes the internal hard drive is not recognized in Paragon P2P Adjust OS due to missing SATA or RAID driver. In that case add specific drivers to Windows PE based Paragon Recovery Environment.

1. Click to open Add Drivers dialog.
   
2. Browse for an .INF file of the required driver, then click the Open button to initiate the process.
   
3. Click Yes to confirm the operation.
   

   Information

You can only add third-party drivers in INF file. If they are zipped, you need to unpack them before processing the steps. The Windows PE environment is 32bit-based, so you need to use 32-bit drivers for injection.

After procedure has finished succesfully and system boots fine, first check if Enable hardware auto-updating via Windows Update (Set to Automatic) is on so it will query Windows Update. After that:

1. Uninstall Device and Device Driver for devices no longer attached to system. Uninstall associated software as well.
2. Install all of your device drivers, then Windows Updates.
3. Refresh your Windows Experience Index (WEI) score.
4. When done, all you will need to do is to activate Windows 7.

After rebooting from disk, drivers should start swapping out in a cascade you can monitor by clicking on the system tray animation. Wait until all are finished before doing the requested restart. After reboot, go immediately to Check for Updates and install all Important and Optional Updates which may include critical drivers and patches for the OS to run on that hardware.

You must reactivate at the Change Product Key link on System page. If it's not present you can insert Product Key and then Activate using SLMgr Commands

On some systems you see "setup is preparing your computer for first use" on every reboot. Read this to fix that issue: Fix "Setup is Preparing Your Computer for First Use" on Every Reboot

Related Tutorials

---

• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/135077-windows-7-installation-transfer-new-computer.html
• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html
• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/96442-device-manager-finding-unknown-devices.html

 

[Biohazard326]

Oh my god....I love you. I just used this program because I had a desktop that I had been using for 2+ years and I didn't want to lose all my niche settings and programs and what not, but I was told that under NO circumstances would I be able to pull my drive out of my old computer and install it (without losing anything) into my new computer. This program and guide saved my butt in SO many ways. I thank you *SO* much for this guide!!!!

 

[Kaktussoft]

Oh my god....I love you. I just used this program because I had a desktop that I had been using for 2+ years and I didn't want to lose all my niche settings and programs and what not, but I was told that under NO circumstances would I be able to pull my drive out of my old computer and install it (without losing anything) into my new computer. This program and guide saved my butt in SO many ways. I thank you *SO* much for this guide!!!!

Glad you have a working computer again.
Did you have to reenter the win7 product key to activate win7?
Did you have to install extra drivers within "P2P adjust OS", or did the program all automatically (replacing drivers with generic ones)?

 

[Kaktussoft]

Oh my god....I love you. I just used this program because I had a desktop that I had been using for 2+ years and I didn't want to lose all my niche settings and programs and what not, but I was told that under NO circumstances would I be able to pull my drive out of my old computer and install it (without losing anything) into my new computer. This program and guide saved my butt in SO many ways. I thank you *SO* much for this guide!!!!

Your new computer most likely has another network card and graphics card. Were these old drivers not listed anymore after running P2P adjust OS and booting? So did it cleanup "device management" stuff?

 

[Biohazard326]

Oh my god....I love you. I just used this program because I had a desktop that I had been using for 2+ years and I didn't want to lose all my niche settings and programs and what not, but I was told that under NO circumstances would I be able to pull my drive out of my old computer and install it (without losing anything) into my new computer. This program and guide saved my butt in SO many ways. I thank you *SO* much for this guide!!!!

Glad you have a working computer again.
Did you have to reenter the win7 product key to activate win7?
Did you have to install extra drivers within "P2P adjust OS", or did the program all automatically (replacing drivers with generic ones)?

I did NOT have to reenter my key, that really shocked me. I didn't have to enter any other drivers either. The program put them all in automatically. Granted on boot (and first reboot), I did have a lot of drivers Windows 7 installed for me.

 

[Biohazard326]

Oh my god....I love you. I just used this program because I had a desktop that I had been using for 2+ years and I didn't want to lose all my niche settings and programs and what not, but I was told that under NO circumstances would I be able to pull my drive out of my old computer and install it (without losing anything) into my new computer. This program and guide saved my butt in SO many ways. I thank you *SO* much for this guide!!!!

Your new computer most likely has another network card and graphics card. Were these old drivers not listed anymore after running P2P adjust OS and booting? So did it cleanup "device management" stuff?

The new motherboard was ENTIRELY different, I went from a Intel Core 2 Quad to an Intel i7 960. Everything was basically changed. And yes it cleaned up device management from what I noticed. I only had a few drivers that were not installed automatically (which is not shocking since the motherboard had a few non-standard addons to it, bluetooth/wifi both built into the motherboard, a Xonar add on card to name a few). I swear overall this was the least painless computer procedure I have EVER encountered.

 

[Kaktussoft]

Oh my god....I love you. I just used this program because I had a desktop that I had been using for 2+ years and I didn't want to lose all my niche settings and programs and what not, but I was told that under NO circumstances would I be able to pull my drive out of my old computer and install it (without losing anything) into my new computer. This program and guide saved my butt in SO many ways. I thank you *SO* much for this guide!!!!

Your new computer most likely has another network card and graphics card. Were these old drivers not listed anymore after running P2P adjust OS and booting? So did it cleanup "device management" stuff?

The new motherboard was ENTIRELY different, I went from a Intel Core 2 Quad to an Intel i7 960. Everything was basically changed. And yes it cleaned up device management from what I noticed. I only had a few drivers that were not installed automatically (which is not shocking since the motherboard had a few non-standard addons to it, bluetooth/wifi both built into the motherboard, a Xonar add on card to name a few). I swear overall this was the least painless computer procedure I have EVER encountered.

So win7 needn't to be reactivated? nice.
All useless drivers are gone in device management... nice. Default ones were installed instead.
Windows update did finish the process.

You had to install "non standard" driverstuff... as you said... quite normal. Just the same as replacing a network card for example.

To recap... just a few clicks and all was working?

 

[Biohazard326]

Yeah everything seemed to be working well when I stopped the project until I get my new case delivered. I would say from burning the iso to dvd, booting, running the program, booting into W7, rebooting and letting it install drivers, then rebooting again....total time was under 30min. That's even with W7 slowly adding drivers in one by one.

 

[Kaktussoft]

1. Uninstall Device and Device Driver for devices no longer attached to system.
2. Install all of your device drivers, then Windows Updates.
3. Refresh your Windows Experience Index (WEI) score.
4. When done, all you will need to do is to activate Windows 7.

Are you very sure step 4 wasn't needed??
Step 1 wasn't needed as well?? If so... I think the p2p adjust OS procedure replaced the graphics driver with "standard vga driver". Afterwards you or windows plug and play did install the correct gpu-driver. Correct?

I need that info to update my tutorial

 

[Biohazard326]

1. Uninstall Device and Device Driver for devices no longer attached to system.
2. Install all of your device drivers, then Windows Updates.
3. Refresh your Windows Experience Index (WEI) score.
4. When done, all you will need to do is to activate Windows 7.

Are you very sure step 4 wasn't needed??
Step 1 wasn't needed as well?? If so... I think the p2p adjust OS procedure replaced the graphics driver with "standard vga driver". Afterwards you or windows plug and play did install the correct gpu-driver. Correct?

I need that info to update my tutorial

No, i actually did step #1 and stripped the drivers, the p2p did adjust the driver to a generic which filled itself in once Windows booted. All in all, other than two or three non-standard devices, W7 installed *ALL* the drivers itself without any problems. #4 I did not have to do, but that may just be a fluke.

By the way...on chance I tested it on Vista (yes, yes, laugh all you want) and it did the same results in almost twice the amount of time. I had a spare IBM/Lenovo laptop and swapped the Vista drive to a Dell, ran the program, voila....works fine (these were just laptops I repaired/restored to sell, so no harm, no foul).

 

[Kaktussoft]

1. Uninstall Device and Device Driver for devices no longer attached to system.
2. Install all of your device drivers, then Windows Updates.
3. Refresh your Windows Experience Index (WEI) score.
4. When done, all you will need to do is to activate Windows 7.

Are you very sure step 4 wasn't needed??
Step 1 wasn't needed as well?? If so... I think the p2p adjust OS procedure replaced the graphics driver with "standard vga driver". Afterwards you or windows plug and play did install the correct gpu-driver. Correct?

I need that info to update my tutorial

No, i actually did step #1 and stripped the drivers, the p2p did adjust the driver to a generic which filled itself in once Windows booted. All in all, other than two or three non-standard devices, W7 installed *ALL* the drivers itself without any problems. #4 I did not have to do, but that may just be a fluke.

By the way...on chance I tested it on Vista (yes, yes, laugh all you want) and it did the same results in almost twice the amount of time. I had a spare IBM/Lenovo laptop and swapped the Vista drive to a Dell, ran the program, voila....works fine (these were just laptops I repaired/restored to sell, so no harm, no foul).

I need that info to update my tutorial[/QUOTE]
Sorry to ask you again...

Did you do step #1 before or after swapping harddisk to other hardware?

 

[Biohazard326]

After, and psh, its no problem, ask anything you want/need.

 

[Kaktussoft]

After, and psh, its no problem, ask anything you want/need.

So you didn't deinstall any drivers before swapping hard drive. After running p2p adjust os... it uninstalled all driver stuff no longer needed.

New drivers were installed automatically (the ones win7 has out of the box) during first reboot after p2p adjust OS.

Correct?

Or did you manually uninstall old GPU driver, network card driver and so on?

 

[Biohazard326]

Nope, I just had cloned my drive (cause I didn't think this would work). And yup, it uninstalled all the stuff I didn't need. New drivers were installed first and second reboots. The umm....sata drivers basically forced me into the first reboot. Wasn't a huge deal cause I actually expected that since I went from a so-so motherboard to a full blown out motherboard with everything and the kitchen sink. And nope, I didn't manually uninstall anything. Just let the program run its course.

 

[Kaktussoft]

1. Uninstall Device and Device Driver for devices no longer attached to system. Uninstall associated software as well.

So "Uninstall associated software ". I think you forgot(?)

Only thing p2p adjust OS did was: "replace sata driver with standard generic one". You could have done that yourself manually before cloning.

 

[Biohazard326]

Actually, I couldn't. The drive I cloned had fallen into a RAW data state. Knowing that I had customer's drives do that before, the solution I remembered was to simply clone the drive to make it sort itself back out. So until I had cloned it, I didn't have access to the drive to uninstall any drivers. And by then I already had the new HD in another computer (the i7 gave me a clone time almost 1/4th the time as the old computer).

 

[gregrocker]

How long can you keep that dropbox link up? Please be mindful that the tutorial depends upon it since Paragon doesn't have this freeware available right now.

I also have it up on my Skydrive but would rather link the tutorial going forward,so want to make sure you plan to preserve the link.

Good work.

 

[Kaktussoft]

How long can you keep that dropbox link up? Please be mindful that the tutorial depends upon it since Paragon doesn't have this freeware available right now.

I also have it up on my Skydrive but would rather link the tutorial going forward,so want to make sure you plan to preserve the link.

Good work.

I plan to keep the link forever

 

[Ccasarguedas]

This is awesome. Once I wondered if that could ever be possible. Thank you for the very informative tutorials and useful tools.I'll keep this for a future win7 installation.

 

[d00p98uy]

nice, I've had a few times where this could have been helpful, I'll see what I can do to integrate it into my Grub4DOS menu on my flashdrive, then It'll always be on hand (I mean, 154MB ain't bad at all)
grr, what a disapointment, Will still use tho, I'll just have to burn the disk