What are the considerations for upgrading to a modern motherboard?

Hello,

I am looking into upgrading to a new CPU, motherboard, and RAM; other parts like graphics card and HDs will be kept from my current system. I have not yet purchased or committed to any particular parts, since I want to make sure I can still run my windows 7 install after the swap.

After looking around, I've seen that there are two problems I need to deal with when doing this:
-Making windows 7 continue to work after swapping the motherboard
-Ensuring that windows 7 can run on the new motherboard

As far as making windows 7 run after the swap, I believe the correct order of operations would be:
-(optionally) clone the current windows 7 drive to a new, empty drive using something like Macrium Reflect
-Install Paragon Rescue Kit 2014 to a CD or USB
-Use DISM++ to inject necessary new drivers
-Swap the hardware
-Boot into RK14 off the CD or USB to adjust windows to run on the new hardware
-Boot into windows 7; Activate windows again (I installed from an OEM disk with three activations associated with the key)

My only concern here is that I currently run my PC as dual-boot with linux, booting to GRUB then using that to chain into booting win7. Is there any potential for this to be an issue?

Is it possible to just find drivers for the new motherboard and install them with DISM++, skipping the use of RK14?


My larger concern is in ensuring the new hardware is compatible with windows 7. As far as I understand this consists of three steps:
1) Installing drivers for USB3/NVMe/SATA.
2) Installing drivers for the CPU's integrated graphics.
3) Ensuring the motherboard chipset is compatible for win7

For 1), I believe universal drivers are available at Update your win7 installation media. I've worked out that these are in the BIN/drivers.7z and only the x64 versions should be used for a 64-bit install. How will I go about actually installing these with DSIM++? Should I go into all subfolders (except AMD folders on an intel CPU and intel folders on an AMD cpu) and select each leaf folder with DISM++'s "add" button under the drivers submenu?

For 2) I understand that this part is dependent on the specific CPU. After selecting a specific CPU (I'm looking at the intel 9700K or 10700K or -KF variants), I need to search up these drivers and install them with DISM++ or whatever the driver's readme states. Is that correct? As I have a discrete graphics card already, is this a step that is necessary for the computer to boot into win7 or is this more of an extra? Should something go wrong with my graphics card and I need to plug my monitor into the CPU without a driver, will I get a black screen/BSOD/fail to boot, or is it just terrible performance as in the days before integrated graphics?

3) seems to be the hardest problem; what can I do to help ensure the motherboard I select will be compatible? I know I need to have support for legacy BIOS boot / non-EFI, but where can I check for this before buying a board? It seems that certain chipsets for newer motherboards have been found to be compatible, is this any guarantee that a certain motherboard will be compatible? Is there a list somewhere of which ones these are? Is there anything else I need to check?


Am I missing anything else?

Kaelies said:

Hello,
...

As far as making windows 7 run after the swap, I believe the correct order of operations would be:
-(optionally) clone the current windows 7 drive to a new, empty drive using something like Macrium Reflect
-Install Paragon Rescue Kit 2014 to a CD or USB
-Use DISM++ to inject necessary new drivers
-Swap the hardware
-Boot into RK14 off the CD or USB to adjust windows to run on the new hardware
-Boot into windows 7; Activate windows again (I installed from an OEM disk with three activations associated with the key)

...

My larger concern is in ensuring the new hardware is compatible with windows 7. As far as I understand this consists of three steps:
1) Installing drivers for USB3/NVMe/SATA.
2) Installing drivers for the CPU's integrated graphics.
3) Ensuring the motherboard chipset is compatible for win7

Am I missing anything else?

I have not heard that you can change motherboard drivers that way. I think the installer would check the chipset, and abort with error. The simplest alternative would be to build a Windows 10 computer, and run Windows 7 as a Virtual Machine installed in the Windows 10 host. That way Windows 7 would not need to be compatible with the underlying hardware - and you get your more modern motherboard, that you wanted.

Otherwise, yes, hardware compatibility would be an major issue. You are also missing the PCIe interface needs to be compatible with your discrete graphics card.

Hi,

I eventually purchased the ASUS STRIX Z490-F motherboard and an intel i7-10700k and wanted to report back on my experience.


I found that after installing the correct drivers the new hardware works with windows 7 with no issues that I can notice. There may be some new features on the cpu/motherboard that I haven't used yet (i.e. the built-in wifi, integrated graphics), so I can't vouch for whether they work or not.

The steps I took were as follows:
-I copied my existing windows disk to a new hard drive
-I installed the new drivers that I knew I would need ahead of time using DISM++. This included the chipset drivers, ethernet drivers, and USB 3.0 drivers*.
-I created backup media using paragon
-I installed the new hardware, then booted up with just the new hard drive installed
--I did not experience any issues with booting immediately; the backup media was not needed in my particular case
-I had to reactivate windows with the new hardware
-I installed the other hard drives I used with the computer. The BIOS warned me that the GRUB installation I used for dual-booting had some issue and offered to fix it. I accepted, then booted to linux and re-installed GRUB.


The only issues I encountered were:

-*The new USB 3 drivers made most of the USB ports on my original motherboard unusable. I initially decided to revert this change and attempt to use the USB-2 ports on the new hardware to test and find the correct drivers to use.
I found that even the USB 2 ports on the new hardware were unusable without the new USB-3 drivers. I had to switch to the old hardware again in order to install the new drivers again, then switch to the new hardware to test it; the USB drivers that I had installed worked properly at this point.

-My original intent behind this upgrade was to enable more RAM in my PC. I discovered that my original version of windows did not support more than 16GB of RAM. I ended up finding and purchasing a Windows 7 Ultimate disk and using the product key to update windows through "Windows anytime upgrade".

Did you install as Legacy-MBR or UEFI-GPT ?

Megahertz07 said:

Did you install as Legacy-MBR or UEFI-GPT ?

Legacy