New mobo, cpu - OLD HDD - how to successfully setup?

Hi all,

Very new to this, so please forgive my newbie'ness.

I had a fatal fry of my old mobo and cpu; and decided to get a new mobo (P67 Sabertooth) and new cpu (i5 2500k) -this has all been bought, so that horse has bolted!

Am i able to install my old HDD with Win 7 Premium home 64bit without a fresh install, as this would save a lot of heartache.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Legaia said:

Yes you can but remove your old mobo drivers before reinstalling your new drivers.

May be difficult to do if the old motherboard is dead.

Simplest way: plug & pray.

If you're lucky, Windows will recognize the hardware changes and install the proper drivers.

If you have any data on the drive that you'd prefer not to lose, I recommend copying it off (external dock or enclosure) before you try the drive with the new motherboard. (I enjoy stating the obvious.)

bobkn said:

Legaia said:

Yes you can but remove your old mobo drivers before reinstalling your new drivers.

May be difficult to do if the old motherboard is dead.

Simplest way: plug & pray.

If you're lucky, Windows will recognize the hardware changes and install the proper drivers.

If you have any data on the drive that you'd prefer not to lose, I recommend copying it off (external dock or enclosure) before you try the drive with the new motherboard. (I enjoy stating the obvious.)

I agree. I replaced my mobo & CPU last year without having to reinstall Windows. It installed the necessary drivers.

whs said:

If it is an OEM OS, you may encounter activation problems.

Excellent point! My copy is a retail version.

You may be able to convince the MS rep to reactivate. It sometimes depends on who answers your call! I was allowed to do it when I changed hardware on another machine running an OEM version of Win XP. Policies at MS could have changed since then.

Neill said:

Again testing your patience; the mobo cd, do i wait until windows has loaded completely before using this?

I have just been told that it really should be a clean install otherwise i will always have problems - would you agree with this statement?

Thanks to the other posters for raising the OEM activation issue, which I forgot to mention. I'm glad that it's not an issue for Neill.

First part: doesn't matter.

Second part: saying that you will always have problems is excessive. You may have no problems at all. If you have problems, they may be fixable by doing a repair install. (That's an upgrade-in-place of Win7 over itself. The main problem with that is that Windows must be bootable to run the upgrade, I believe. If that's correct, it's an unfortunate change from XP.) If things don't work out, you may be driven to a clean install, but I'd place a small bet (5¢) that it won't be necessary.

I agree that a clean install is best, but I refuse to be a puritan about it.