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Motherboard/cpu replacement

N

NOLA_tech

Junior Member
I may be replacing my motherboard and cpu. I would like to use my current HDD without reinstalling Win7 (I know I will have to reactivate Windows). My plan was to uninstall most devices and install the new motherboard devices the first time I boot my pc with the new components. Would booting into safemode be better? Thanks.
 
Windows 7 is a LOT more forgiving than XP was for board swaps. Uninstalling devices will probably increase your odds. That being said prepare for the worst and backup anything of value.
 
The main problem you will have is the storage controller driver. Try it in IDE mode if it blue screens. I believe there is a way to add the SATA driver later.
 
For sure backup and make an image of your main OS drive before doing anything. This way you can go back to exactly what you had before you started. If your hard drive controllers are similar, say both Intel but a different chipset, it can be relatively painless. My experience is Windows 7 is really graceful about big hardware changes. XP would blu-screen on you a lot when you tried this. Windows 7 has built in support for many SATA controllers whereas XP had virtually zero.
 
Another factor to consider would be: the bios setting for the HD controller: IDE mode vs. AHCI mode. If you get a BSOD while bios is configured for AHCI mode, switching to IDE mode may enable successfully booting to desktop.
 
Thanks for the replies. I am now leaning towards getting a new SSD and installing Win8 in hopes that 8.1 will bring back the start button.
 
Getting an SSD and installing windows 8 is the route I took. Windows 8 is fine after a few tweaks. The Win 8 experience was god-awful at first, but after making it more like Windows 7 (installing classic shell, skipping start screen, and uninstalling all Metro Apps, and some tweaks to reduce the charms bar effect) it's not so bad. I do miss the aero-glass look sometimes, but overall it's an upgrade from windows 7 (IMO).
 
Anyways, you can always try to boot the old drive with the new motherboard. If you geta blue-screen, then doing a windows repair-install always works for me, and it keeps all your old programs and files just as they were. I haven't tried it with WIndows 8, but repair-install works fine for Windows 7, and I've done a few motherboard upgrades (AMD to Intel) with it.
 
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