Fitting new motherboard and I could do without reinstalling

[Avinitlarge]

I am replacing my mobo shortly. I am running W7 and XP dual boot, I am using the same cpu, graphics card ram, drives etc. I don't want to reinstall at the moment, how do I go about getting it all to work correctly?

TIA
PAUL

 

[seavixen32]

Backup everything first. I can't stress how important that is.

Do not format your hard drive.

Install the new motherboard then carry out a Repair Install.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html

However, I have to say that if it were me I'd go for a clean install.

Is your operating system OEM or retail? If OEM it's tied to your current motherboard.

 

[Avinitlarge]

Its retail. After backing everything important up Ive had a think. Its been nearly 2 years since I did a clean install, its running a bit slow too. Gonna bite the bullet and do a clean install and then spend a full night getting everything back to as it was

 

[gregrocker]

Steps to get a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 which are the same for retail.

 

[essenbe]

Greg is right, a clean install is best. But, if you want to, you can run sysprep.

 

[cary123]

Yes, you can, as long as your current hard drive is compatible with your new motherboard. Your OS is on your hard drive, so if you are keeping the store brand hard drive, you in essence can keep your OS & documents, etc. while still installing a new motherboard and processor.

 

[unifex]

I will agree with the experts here - a clean install is the preferred course of action.

I have done that myself recently - got a new motherboard. At first I felt lazy and did not want to re-install, I thought I just connect all the drives, configure the BIOS settings, and do a repair install. Did not work. The new motherboard was rather different it appeared, some drivers were missing, and so the repair install got too complicated. I re-installed and now everything is running better than ever.

 

[gregrocker]

FYI a Repair Install only works to adjust the OS to new hardware in XP.

The problem with trying to start Win7 on new hardware will be that it most often stalls at loading drivers phase, normally at the boot animation.

Since the Repair Install is no longer done at boot as in XP, it is not available to help. And Startup Repair is not normally able to fix this, although you can try.

 

[DeaconFrost]

Here's yet another reason I despise multi-boot systems. It adds another big level of work and confusion to what should be a simple process. If it was me, I'd add another 2 GB of memory, go to Windows 7 x64, and then virtualize XP to simplify my setup.