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#11
Having had a similar experience, I would recommend the following:
1) Image off the existing Win7 installation. Personally, would recommend Macrium Reflect, as it's free and I've found it to work quite well. Others will have other favorites.
2) When you have your new system built, connect up the existing drive (with no changes), boot into Win7, stick in the motherboard CD and install the drivers. They may not be the most current, but they will all work. You may have to reboot a few times.
3) You could then either (1) let Windows Update find updated drivers, or (2) go to the motherboard vendor's site and see if they have newer drivers; either way, update the drivers
4) Once that is all done, use the system for a few days. If it's working OK, image this version off so you have a restore capability.
Then, you can decide, whether or not you want to do a "clean" install. It will be a LOT of work, you will have to reinstall everything, you will have to reactivate quite a few things.
I have done BOTH because I ran into the inability to hibernate the new system, and into LAN hardware problems, when I used the first approach.
But, that being said, when I then spent two weeks doing the "clean install" method -- the end result was no better than with the first approach.
My recommendation, which probably everyone else will veto, is to try out the first approach and see how well it goes. You can always choose to do the second approach any time you want -- later.
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