Can I swap motherboards without re-installing Win7?

braddersz · 29 Jan 2013

bbinnard said:

Kaktussoft - thanks for your detailed reply. After reading through it I think I will be OK without doing a lot of what you suggested:

1. My current system has a Logitech keyboard and a Kensington trackball and specific drivers for each. I'll put these on the new motherboard when I boot so there should not be a problem with either. Plus, I know both work OK when booting in Safe Mode, so I always have that as a backup.

2. Since my current system boots off an SSD my bios is set to AHCI mode and I will ensure the new BIOS gets set that way too before I boot.

3. My current system includes both the Intel ICH10R SATA AHCI controller and the Standard AHCI controller so I am already covered there.

4. The network "card" on the new board is the same as the oine in my current board so that should be OK.

5. My current system does have a PCI/USB3 adapter card driving a USB 2/3 multi-function card reader (P6T board is only USB2), but this device has it's own driver CD which I have. Since the new motherboard has USB3 included I may not install this reader on the new system, but if I do I have the driver CD to take care of it.

6. The new system has an nVidia graphics card that is supported by the same nVidia driver I am currently running, so this should work OK. If not I can always go into Safe Mode and update it.

I would still recommend uninstalling, and reinstalling new drivers using the Disc that comes with the board, Perhaps check the Manu's website for the latest drivers.

Kaktussoft · 29 Jan 2013

My current system includes both the Intel ICH10R SATA AHCI controller and the Standard AHCI controller so I am already covered there.

Both are in device manager? Please post screenshot

Post screenshot of disk management as well please with all fields visible

Kaktussoft · 29 Jan 2013

Only real problem is SATA driver. If you have an INTEL driver installed and new motherboard has non intel... it bsod's in stopcode 7B. Using tricks you can insert standard sata driver hower. (very difficult). Also important is uninstall special CPU software.

USB, network card... can be fixed later.
gpu problem... boot in safe mode and uninstall driver.

To recover the usb mess.... uninstall all usb serial bus-controllers stuff in device manager and let windows discover it after reboot.

bbinnard · 29 Jan 2013

Can I swap motherboards without re-installing Win7?-devicemgr.jpg

Can I swap motherboards without re-installing Win7?-diskmgr.jpg

C: is current boot SSD; X: is old SSD currently used for temp etc.; F: & G: are HDDs for data/backup/etc.

Kaktussoft · 29 Jan 2013

bbinnard said:

C: is current boot SSD; X: is old SSD currently used for temp etc.; F: & G: are HDDs for data/backup/etc.

Device manager looks fine.

"system reserved" on disk 0 and disk 3 can be deleted. Normally it's active and has bootmenu and bootmgr. Because you boot from C (marked system) they are useless! After deletion you can add their space to C and X. You can do this using Partition Wizard Home (move/resize partition). Althouth it's only 100MB you win.

Only C is marked active .. so even if you swap disk cables.... it can only boot from C. Great!

Did you place pagefile on F on purpose?

Kaktussoft · 29 Jan 2013

After swapping motherboards:

All disks have the disk signature as before. No matter in which order you connect them windows can uniquely identify them
Start sector of each partition will still be the same. All partitions will have correct drive letter.

Drive letters are maintaned in registry of OS. In registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices it's defined. It's a combination of disksignature+startsector. Partition Wizard "move-action" modifies the start sector ... and adjusts this key.

bbinnard · 29 Jan 2013

Thanks again for your helpful reply.

I am aware of the 100MB partition on disks 0 and 3. My understanding was that this got created when Win7 gets installed and was needed to be kept in order for the Win7 disk recovery function to operate. Originally drive 3 was my Win7 boot device but I cloned it onto Disk 0 when I started to get short of free space due to the ever-increasing size of WINSXS. (WINSXS is my biggest complaint about Win7, but that's a different issue.)

I used to run with no paging file at all but I read somewhere that the absence of a page file can (somehow) reduce Win7's efficiency. Even though this made no sense to me I put a paging file out there simply because I have the space available to do so.

My new system will have 8GB RAM instead of the 6 I have now so I'm probably going to remove the page file again.

I took the Active tag off my old boot drive because i found out only the low-level boot manager sees this and it's best to have only your real boot drive marked as Active. I used to think Active meant active (silly me!) and I was a bit hesitant to take that parameter off a drive that was currently active/running, but as you know doing that had no effect on anything.

My sense is that most people do not understand what the Active parameter really means.

Kaktussoft · 29 Jan 2013

In Elevated Command Prompt

Code:

bcdedit/enum all>bcd.txt

post file c:\windows\system32\bcd.txt , afterwards you can delete that file. I will look at it if there are no references to system reserved.

System Protection - Turn On or Off
Are all settings there as expected? They are disabled sometimes after cloning. Disable it on ghost disks if listed there

Mark Phelps · 29 Jan 2013

DeaconFrost said:

Mark Phelps said:

It's not free but it can save a lot of work and hassle reinstalling lots of software.

I wouldn't say it saves work and hassle...it just brings a different set of work and hassles. Anytime you migrate an install, there is still plenty of cleanup work to do, testing to be done, and drivers to install. None of that even accounts for the random issues or troubleshooting you may have to do, since it wasn't a clean install.

So you say (and generally, I agree), but I actually DID this on a Win7 PC and not only did I have NO cleanup to do, it created NO new work or hassles.

The MR tool found all the drivers and installed them for me. There were no drivers I had to hunt down or install myself. After 15 minutes, the PC was up and running and now, months later, there has still not been a single problem.

And yeah, it surprised me to as, before I did that, I expected the kinds of problems you mention.

Not saying this is always going to be the case, but it my case, it DID save a lot of work and hassles.

bbinnard · 30 Jan 2013

Results of bcdedit:

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=C:
path \bootmgr
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
default {current}
displayorder {current}
timeout 30

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {current}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 7 Home Premium (recovered)
locale en-US
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {2241f931-40fe-11e2-b762-806e6f6e6963}

Resume from Hibernate
---------------------
identifier {2241f931-40fe-11e2-b762-806e6f6e6963}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winresume.exe
description Windows 7 Home Premium (recovered)
locale en-US
inherit {resumeloadersettings}
filedevice partition=C:
filepath \hiberfil.sys
debugoptionenabled No

Windows Memory Tester
---------------------
identifier {memdiag}
device partition=C:
path \boot\memtest.exe
description Windows Memory Diagnostic
locale en-US

I normally run with System Protection off because I am careful about what I download & run and in general like to have the minimum number of system tasks running. But lately I've been running with it on.