AMD mobo swap; feasible or lunacy ?!

[WT]

Looking for some help with an upgrade that I'm planning in the next week or so, from an AM3 to an AM3+ board, specifics listed below:

Existing rig: AMD 790X chipset 710SB

New board: AMD 970 chipset 950SB

I've done plenty of board swaps in the past, but those were Win XP vintage, and most were a bit closer in hardware specs. Granted, I'm still dealing with AMD and the same video card, but everything else changes - the board and CPU. What I'm trying to avoid is the dreaded 0xc0000007 BSOD you'll get if you haven't dealt with the SATA drivers for the chipset.

I have a Vertex 4 128GB SSD as my OS, and everything else lives on a 1TB storage drive. My alternative to this would obviously be to use MS utility WET (Windows Easy Transfer) and transfer the account/settings after a fresh OS install, but I'm trying to avoid that, as it is working just fine as it is.

Priority #1 is changing the SATA controller driver to a generic MS one before the board swap, and I must plug the SSD into the same SATA port on the new board as where it was plugged into the old board.

Are there any other tips to make this work, or must I go with the majority of replies I expect to say 'Just reformat it and start over from scratch !!' I guess I like to try to do things and learn from them, even if they aren't the 'correct' way to go about it.

 

[vailr]

Priority #1 is changing the SATA controller driver to a generic MS one before the board swap

That's the most important step.
Otherwise: you could locate the new board's SATA chipset driver .inf file, and then copy that to a USB thumb drive, so that (before unplugging the boot drive from the old system) right-click & pre-install the new chipset driver.
Note: that procedure works with Intel chipset boards, and should probably also work with AMD boards.
If that doesn't work, there's also the option of booting from the Windows installation disc, and then supplying the SATA driver stored on the USB thumb drive. And then choosing the "Repair Windows" option.

 

[WT]

Thanks vailr ! All additional things to keep in mind before the swap. I have a full backup of the OS that occurs nightly to my home server (WHS 2011) so there's no chance of losing any data, just the time an effort requred to reinstall the OS from scratch, which is only a 2 hour job, but adding all of the software that I had running on it is a P.I.T.A.

 

[PingSpike]

There's a procedure where you can do sysprep /generalize or something like that from the command line that basically allows this swap without trouble on Windows 7 at least. I used it to transfer an OEM Windows 7 disk drive from an AMD based laptop to a Intel Sandybridge based desktop once. Its a way bigger pain in the ass than I feel it should be but it did work.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

I've switched a p35 to x38 motherboard to p55 motherboard. Also a pentium 4+board to core2duo+board.

Never really did anything special, just swapped the hardware and windows sorted it out by itself.

 

[WT]

@PS - Trying to find something to document the Sysprep /generalize option, but not finding anything that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. We just started using Sysprep at work last year, but I am far from comfortable with how it will work in my case.

@Flap - that's a distinct possibility with the boards you listed. They are quite close in chipsets that it wouldn't surprise me that it does work in most cases. I can't remember doing an AMD swap, so being unfamiliar with it is what has me worried.

Good news is I have a full backup of the OS partition on my home server, so worst case scenario is I will have to restore the drive from a bare metal backup done the night before.

Edit: I'm also using a VLK version of Win7, so if anything that should make my work easier. Also, found this info on Sysprep to use as my guide if I wanna go that route: http://theitbros.com/sysprep-a-windows-7-machine-%E2%80%93-start-to-finish/

 

[WT]

Did the swap today - wow, how easy can it get ? I don't do board swaps that often, preferring to do a clean install, but this was literally without issue. To be honest, the old X4 965 wasn't a slouch for how I used the PC, but I wanted SATA6 and USB3 as well as the much better OC potential from the 970 board.

I started by setting up the board on a box, then removed my SSD and plugged it into the same SATA5 port that I had it in on the older board, testing it outside of the case to make sure it booted without any issues. Once it was back in the case, I ran into a slight problem .. it wouldn't boot !! Turns out I didn't press the RAM sticks in tightly and they were both unseated.

Only hurdle after that was a bootmgr not found error I got at startup after I left an external drive plugged into the case to install the latest drivers for the board. Woops

This is actually my first build with a UEFI (I prefer Gigabyte boards, who held out for an eternity on UEFI) and I always overclock and I always do it from the BIOS. But I decided to see what this new hardware and 6 core chip could do, so I enabled AMD Overdrive and let it hammer away, scaling up the multi while adding voltage, and I never even saw the end of the test !! It got to 4.6@1.425v and I stopped it prematurely. I set it to 4.5 and ran a few runs of Valley to warm things up.

Very pleased with the new hardware so far. For $100 ($65 FX 6300, $35 MSI 970 Gaming), I feel like I eliminated a few bottlenecks on the rig.