Motherboard failure and Windows 7 recovery

[Balthazar]

After recently upgrading to Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit, first my old graphics card melted, which I successfully replaced, and now my motherboard recently crapped itself. I've replaced it with a different motherboard and had to upgrade my RAM, but still retained the old CPU. Windows 7 now won't load, I presume because the existing drivers are incompatible. I am really, really keen not to have to do a complete reinstall of Windows 7 (because my wife has all her Outlook contacts on the HD and hasn't backed them up and she will make my life a complete misery if I can't recover them ). However, I notice there is no 'rebuild' function for Windows 7. I have been led to believe that if I delete the old MoBo and RAM drivers then Windows 7 is clever enough to load without them and download new ones from the Internet but am unsure how to go about this. None of the safe mode functions seem to allow this. I also understand that the Windows OEM might not accept my old product key but would be happy if I even got to that stage at this point!

I'm sure I'm not the first for this to have happened. Has anyone else come up with a creative solution?

 

[Bill2]

Hello,

These 2 threads have a lot of info.

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/3856-upgrading-motherboard-windows-7-a.html

New Motherboard

 

[Balthazar]

Indeed Bill2 - thanks for pointing these out. However, they only seem to refer to people who are poised to upgrade their motherboards rather than those whose motherboards have failed.

 

[bobkn]

The first thing that you should do is copy the Outlook stuff off the HD.

The first thing I'd try after that is repairing the startup. That would require a Win7 DVD or equivalent. (I've seen location on the Web for download unhacked .iso files of various flavors. It may not be permissible to post the locations here, even though they aren't warez sites. A few seconds of web searching should find MyDigitalLife, though.)

Failing that, you may be able to do what used to be called a repair install, which is installing Win7 as an upgrade over itself. Again, that requires a DDV or equivalent. It may not be permitted by an OEM DVD (no upgrade).

Good luck.