Changing Motherboard, Same Install?

[copernicus]

So I had a motherboard die on me recently. I'm running Win7 ultimate on it.

My plan was to just replaced the mobo, so that I won't have to deal with new install, but they don't make p4 boards anymore lol.

So I'm gonna go from an ABIT IC7 / P4 to a Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L with Pentium Dual core e5400 .

Do you guys think I can get away without having to reinstall w7?

 

[ken9122]

Yes, but you will need to do a phone activation.

Ken

 

[Darician]

I doubt it, you'll probably have to reinstall. You'll know when you install it though as it will either boot or it won't.

 

[stormy13]

Can it be done? Most likely, but as Ken said you will have to activate again. All things considering I would just back up what needs to be saved and clean install. Saves any potential problems from old driver leftovers and whatnot.

P.S. You didn't mention it, but hope you budgeted for new ram as the DDR in your old Abit board won't work in that new Gigabyte (uses DDR2).

 

[bobtran]

Very little chance that this will work, the drivers are very different between P4 and dual core not to mention the change in bios and MB drivers. You will definitely WANT to re-install, even if you can repair the install you will probably create problems down the road that require a clean install to fix. I speak from doing this exact thing when I moved a Win7 drive from a Dell C600 (PIII) laptop to a C640 (P4)laptop and that was Dell to Dell which is far more similar/compatible than your scenario. Definitely a ram issue. Phone activation will be required. The other issue would be if your Windows7 install is an OEM copy (Full version or upgrade disk will work however), you may have an issue because Microsoft considers a different MB/processor to be a different computer and OEM is tied to that specific computer (would have to be the same MB although you could change processor to a faster P4.

As the MB died already I guess you will not be able to backup your data prior but if you have or can get another drive you might as well do a clean install on it and then put the origional drive in as a secondary so as to copy your old data to the new drive. This would serve 2 purposes the main one being a chance to upgrade to a larger and perhaps faster drive.

 

[copernicus]

Thanks for the info guys. I had the ram issued dialed out already.

Looks like a fun fun day of reinstalling virtual machines and obscure hardware. grrr

 

[DirtRider]

I just did an upgrade running Win 7 32bit OEM

New MB
New Graphics Card
New CPU
New RAM

Installed the new hardware started up detected new drivers no problem. Just had to install the drivers for the graphics card manually by running the install of graphics software. The funny thing was that I had to reactivate Office 2010 but just over the net.

I had this

Specification Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz
Northbridge Intel P965/G965 rev. C1
Memory Size 4GB DDR2
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512

And now I have this

CPU Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz
Motherboard H55-G43(MS-7638)
Memory 4GB DDR3
Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470

 

[copernicus]

Well, I'm gonna give it a shot either way. =D

 

[Bill]

Last time I replaced my mobo, Windows 7 got to the log in screen. Nothing else would work (mice, keyboard). I did a reinstall and everything worked fine.

Bill

 

[veldthui]

It will work. I did the same with mine (not same MB as yours though). Just make sure you have all the drivers available for the new MB. As Win7 boots up it should detect the new hardware and put default drivers in place. You can then install the correct ones. You will of course need to activate Win7 again and depending on what option you use on the phone you will need to enter number or talk to someone. Just make sure when it asks you if you have uninstalled the software you say yes or you will have to talk to someone.

 

[gregrocker]

It works about half the time in about 25 attempts I've made.

Reinstall the Product Key at Computer>Properties or using slmgr commands.

If it works there is no reported performance hit, chkdsk comes up clean every time so far.

You can force it to work using Paragon Adaptive Restore.

 

[copernicus]

I went ahead and attempted to just replace the mobo without doing a fresh install....


Success! Booted into safe mode and w7 installed all the drivers for the mobo. Then I booted into regular windows, installed the rest of the drives, no issues.

The about screen said I had three days to validate windows, went ahead and did it and validated it without issue.

I've loved W7 since the very first leak. <3

 

[gregrocker]

The drivers for the mobo were likely already in the installer which has nearly every modern mobo and SATA driver.

Glad it worked.

 

[ken9122]

That's great.
Ken

 

[bobtran]

Glad it worked out for you.