Upgrading motherboard on Windows 7

[gregrocker]

I pull HD"s and install Win7 regularly when OD/flash won't boot, and upon return to old machine with all new hardware (to the OS) except HD, it changes out all of the drivers in an impressive show but never has a "breakdown."

In fact performance has never been compromised in the slightest, which was the biggest surprise as the first time I ran chkdsk, HD scan, sfc, etc. expecting disaster.

....Not a hiccup.

Maybe you thought the cascading drivers show was a breakdown?

 

[radianation]

So you're saying that you swap hardware and no problems? I'm on 64bit Windows 7 if that matters. I know a few years ago 64bit OS was a little more "picky" with drivers, but that seems to be a non-issue lately.

Tomorrow I will try to swap mobo, cpu, and ram and see if the new system will boot. If not, I'll be doing another clean install. I've installed and configured 8 new computers recently with Windows 7 (small business owner) and while the install is simple, not all of the upgrades from Vista -> Windows 7 went smooth. Because of all of the extra work the last thing I want to do is reinstall another machine, hence the desire to just swap some hardware and be done with it.

 

[bigmck]

Hey, speaking of that, I know that 1GB is not really 1,000,000,000 but rather 1024x1024x1024. I've seen the 32-bit OS limit on RAM as 3.X and 4GB. The point may be moot for me, but if I plunk in 2x2048MB in RAM, would Win7 recognize every bit of it?

No, it will be the same thing. 3.X is going to be your limit. I have 2 X 2048 and that is just the way it is. When you go to 64-bit you can get more Ram, but the programs are limited in number for 64-bit at this time. It kind of defeats the purpose.

 

[RogerR]

So you're saying that you swap hardware and no problems? I'm on 64bit Windows 7 if that matters. I know a few years ago 64bit OS was a little more "picky" with drivers, but that seems to be a non-issue lately.

I just had to do a mobo swap (from EVGA to Elite Group) on a 7x64 machine a couple of weeks ago. Plugged everything in and booted up into a repair install, One restart and it was all back to normal.

 

[radianation]

SUCCESS!!

Tonight I upgraded from an Nvidia Chipset Asus M3N72-D with Phenom x4 to AMD/ATI chipset MSI 790FX-GD70. It booted up directly into Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit and detected all of the changed settings. At this point I selected to uninstall all Nvidia drivers but my video card drivers. After everything was done I rebooted and it's working like a champ.

I made sure my SATA port was the same for my HD on both mobo (boot drive in port 1). Could be superstitious, but it worked.

The only two things I can think of...

#1 - It's ok to go from Nvidia to AMD, but not the other way around?
#2 - Windows 7 Ultimate works better than Windows 7 Pro for this???

Good luck if you try. I'm 1 for 2 and couldn't be more pleased at the moment.

 

[gregrocker]

How about activation? Did you change key at Computer>Properties link to reinstall key so it doesn't flag activation on hardware change?

The other method is repair install to acclimate the new hardware and reset activation, since it always requires key being reapplied anyway. May require robo call to MS which "Deactivates" key on old hardware and activates new one.

 

[radianation]

I did not have to reactivate windows after swapping motherboards.

 

[Tepid]

No, it will be the same thing. 3.X is going to be your limit. I have 2 X 2048 and that is just the way it is. When you go to 64-bit you can get more Ram, but the programs are limited in number for 64-bit at this time. It kind of defeats the purpose.

This is not entirely true, as I understand it.
And I encourage anyone to do more in-depth (not forums, actual articles) research.
Yes, Windows will report only 3G of ram,,, but,, Windows (regardless of 32 or 64 bit),, should reserve the 1st Gig for certain things. Now, htat could be 100M or 900M. So, yes, while there may be a bit of "wasted" memory, not all of it is. It is not, just not used.

64Bit just handles it differently than 32bit

 

[Decipher]

If you really want to know why and how Windows 32-bit versions are limited to approx 3 GB ram, then read this article Geoff Chappell, Software Analyst - Viewer

It's brilliant work imo - long story short though, the limit is not an architectural one, but a covert licensing policy by MS, ostensibly to make you upgrade to 64-bit and leave some more of your cash in the MS vault.

 

[Tepid]

I did not read all of that,,, but,, it pretty much doesn't make much since. If MS wanted to force more money out of people to purchase 64bit by limiting memory usage in 32bit..... Then why do they provide both 32bit and 64bit with every retail copy of windows? If you purchase OEM, and for whatever reason the above article is true,,,, then you should have purchased 64bit anyway, and if you wish to upgrade then you will need to do so. With that said,,,, Yes, I can see how this could be (if true) bad business practice, by not disclosing it as a license issue and had they just stated as such from the get go this wouldn't be an issue. But, I digress to my earlier statement of "you get both 32bit and 64bit with retail purchase". If you did not go that route and went with 32bit, that is your fault. Quite honestly, this should be moot as Vista/7 should have been 64bit only anyway.

 

[Decipher]

The author doesn't actually speculate that it's to make money, that was my theory.

The author does however prove that the 3gb limit on 32-bit is a licensing issue, nothing else. He mods his own kernel to disable the license check, and then proceeds to run a 32-bit XP with 8 GB of working memory.

The reason for this? Ask MS .. I have no idea why they want to create this limit, but they sure have created it, where no limit needed to exist.

 

[Tepid]

Who knows,, maybe they are, maybe they aren't.
It may not be all as simple as that..... Or maybe it could
Fact is, that is the way it is,, and I am perfectly fine forcing the issue of everybody going to 64bit and 32bit going to the dino world.

4G hasn't really been an issue till recently. And as I said earlier, 7 atleast, should have been 64bit only anyway which would make this whole thing moot.

 

[bobkn]

If you really want to know why and how Windows 32-bit versions are limited to approx 3 GB ram, then read this article Geoff Chappell, Software Analyst - Viewer

It's brilliant work imo - long story short though, the limit is not an architectural one, but a covert licensing policy by MS, ostensibly to make you upgrade to 64-bit and leave some more of your cash in the MS vault.

Interesting.

I was aware that there are 32 bit server versions of Windows that support more than 4GB of RAM through PAE. I suppose that I shouldn't have been surprised that the feature is present in the desktop versions, although disabled.

32 bit apps can still only address a maximum of 3GB each, although large RAM would permit multiple apps to avoid competing for memory. The limitation isn't present for 64 bit apps. Too bad they're rare.

 

[Brighamite]

This worked for me

This worked for me
I recently installed Windows 7 on my computer and had everything up and running. My fried them upgraded his CPU and gave me hi sold one as it was better than mine. This forced me to buy a new motherboard and RAM. After booting with new hardware i got the BSOD. Safe mode did nothing to fix the problem. I figured I would have to do a repair install but found out that you can only run that while windows is running. I decided to try an unorthodox fix and it worked. If you backup your data before trying this then all you have to loose is the time and may have to do a clean install.

1. before changing your hardware, run the setup.exe on the Window 7 DVD while windows is running.

2. Choose an Upgrade install when you get to that option.

3. The upgrade install takes longer since it backs up your files, settings and registry.

4. ***Important Step***** Wait patiently for windows install to reboot your computer the first time during the upgrade install process. As soon as it says it is going to reboot, wait for the screen to go black and pull the plug on your computer.

5. At this point change out your motherboard and turn the computer back on. The HAL file has been overwritten at this point so Windows does not know what hardware was there. The installation will continue as normal but may hang for about 15 20 minutes before going on to the next step.

6. After that it should continue as normal and detect all your new hardware. When mine finally came up I had to load a few drivers and change a few settings but nothing major. So far everything seems to be running stable.

 

[blued]

^ For some reason a clean install sounds like less of a hassle than that. I just got a new mobo, CPU, RAM. Will try to boot up normally but at first hint of trouble, will not waste time and just go for a clean install.

 

[blued]

Microsoft personnel say that Win 7 by design is supposed to handle hardware changes (incl mobo) with little or no trouble:

How to change motherboard on Windows 7 system

 

[radianation]

Read my post earlier in this thread. I just changed the HW and I was fine. Eventually it did ask me to authenticate via the automated phone system, but that worked fine.

 

[Victek]

Read my post earlier in this thread. I just changed the HW and I was fine. Eventually it did ask me to authenticate via the automated phone system, but that worked fine.

So, the short answer is sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't? Has anyone figured out any pattern for success for failure? I'm planning to change out my mobo which will mean a switch from an AMD to an Intel CPU. Does this make any difference in terms of the likelihood of success?

The advantage of a clean install is obvious and installing the OS doesn't take long, but really getting the system "personalized" as it was before takes a fair bit of time.

 

[radianation]

You might have some trouble swapping CPU and not just mobo. Good luck.

 

[Victek]

The latest is I moved the hard drive to the new motherboard/cpu. Windows 7 booted properly the first time, discovered and installed the new drivers automatically and after a reboot I was done. I don't regret all the caution and preparation I did first, but this turned out to be about the easiest upgrade I've ever done. Just color me lucky I guess...