Do I need to reinstall windows with a new mobo?

[GoingUp]

Running Windows XP pro. I had an Abit NF7 motherboard that went bad on me. I sent it back to newegg and now i Have a NF7-S coming my way. The difference between the NF7 and the NF7-S is that the NF7-S has serial hard drive controllers and a firewire controller. Can I just plug everything into the board and have it work, or should I really reinstall windows from scratch?

 

[boomerang]

For some information on this look here

and under Misc. Notes: here, I've used the repair option many times.
There is a procedure using sysprep outlined in that article also.

If you have all your important data backed up, give it a try. I've had a 100% success rate with the repair option, but from some posts here and some research, the sysprep method sounds better.

However, having said all that, with the minimal changes between the boards, I'll bet you could get away with it without all the hoopla. Installing the mobo drivers afterwards will probably set you right up.

The important thing is to be prepared ahead of time.

 

[BlueWeasel]

As boomerang mentioned, the minimal differences between the two boards means you probably wouldn't have to do much. It would be more tricky if you were changing motherboard chipsets or processor brands, but can still be done.

 

[madthumbs]

I swapped mobo's and cpus from a7n8x deluxe to an a8v deluxe (whole different chipset brand). I accidently missed the intervene point of bootup to do my normal "repair". Windows booted fine, and healed itself. I've since cleaned out old drivers, and programs which Advanced Uninstaller helped with some.

 

[JackMDS]

You can give it a try there is nothing to lose reformatting is always available.

If the Computer boots and can read the Hard Drive it is relatively easy to load the Chipset and peripheral drivers and see if it works well. If it does not you can always reformat.

The problem is in those instances that the old IDE drivers can not read the Hard Drive and it comes up with the Blue Screen of ?You might have a Virus? etc.

Under these circumstances it might be faster and better to reformat and start from scratch. The Repair/F6 process might or might not work and at the end it would not save much time.

:sun:

 

[GoingUp]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
You can give it a try there is nothing to lose reformatting is always available.

If the Computer boots and can read the Hard Drive it is relatively easy to load the Chipset and peripheral drivers and see if it works well. If it does not you can always reformat.

The problem is in those instances that the old IDE drivers can not read the Hard Drive and it comes up with the Blue Screen of ?You might have a Virus? etc.

Under these circumstances it might be faster and better to reformat and start from scratch. The Repair/F6 process might or might not work and at the end it would not save much time.

:sun:

The chipsets are all the same, it just has an additonal serial controllers and a firewire controller...

 

[JackMDS]

You have two choices.

1. Try and if does not work reformat.

2. Reformat.

Basic logic shows that since choice 1 does not preclude choice 2 it is the superior choice.

:sun:

 

[ProviaFan]

I went from an Athlon XP with Abit NF7-S v2 to an Athlon 64 X2 with ASUS A8N-E and accidentally forgot to set the BIOS up to boot from CD-ROM. Windows almost worked, except the ethernet was not detected. Since I was going to reinstall anyway, I didn't bother trying to fix it, but I was surprised that things got as far as they did (including automatic detection of the dual cores!).

 

[GoingUp]

bump... board should be here by the end of the week

 

[RJR2006]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
You have two choices.

1. Try and if does not work reformat.

2. Reformat.

Basic logic shows that since choice 1 does not preclude choice 2 it is the superior choice.

:sun:

i second that

 

[Phoenix86]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
You have two choices.

1. Try and if does not work reformat.

2. Reformat.

Basic logic shows that since choice 1 does not preclude choice 2 it is the superior choice.

:sun:

There are 2 other options as well. The repair method outlines above, and sysprep.
I like sysprep, it's uber quick, and it's an MS tool exactly written for the job.
Sysprep guide.

Longhorn will be using this method built into the OS for "major" hardware changes (read mobo swaps).

edit: longhorn will also ship as a syspreped image for the install as opposed to the traditional installer.

Linky

Every OS build, including the final release of Longhorn will ship as a Sysprep?d OS image which has been ?Installed?

 

[groovin]

ive gone from a Duron 1.3 to P4 2.8 with completely different chipsets... i had to do a windows repair first though and then reinstall all the drivers.

i also tried an athlon xp to an athlon xp with a different chipset and ended up reformatting... back up your data first!

 

[ProviaFan]

Keep your data on another partition (or better yet, another drive). Backups are still important, but at least you shouldn't have to do a restore following a reinstall, unless something goes drastically wrong. With data on another drive, just unplug the data drive during your Windows install, and you're practically guaranteed that nothing will get accidentally erased.

 

[Daniel]

Click me!

 

[groovin]

Daniel, thanks for that link!!