Moving Vista to new Motherboard

[RebateMonger]

My apologies if this has been discussed. I follow this Forum pretty closely, and don't recall any discussion.

I'm moving my office systems to Vista, and am trying to move an almost-new Vista Business installation from one motherboard to another one. The "old" board (Asrock 775i65G) has an Intel 865 chipset with an Intel ICH5 controller. The new board (FoxConn P9657AB-8EKRS2H) has an Intel P965 chipset with an ICH8R controller. The CPU (Core2Duo) is identical. I'm trying to move the hard drive (a 200 GB IDE drive) with Vista installed from the old motherboard to the new one.

Vista Business was installed from scratch on the "old" motherboard a few days ago, from a Microsoft-integrated Vista SP1 Install DVD, which is also being used for the "recovery". All memory has passed a 24-hour Memtest 86+ on its motherboard. I've successfully installed Server 2008 on the "new" motherboard and it ran for a week without incident.

It's not a big deal at this point if I'm unsuccessful. But I'm trying to learn how a "repair" might be done in the future.

I realize that Vista doesn't have a "Repair Install" capability like XP did. Nevertheless, I thoght there was SOME way to do a migration to a new motherboard. But the solution has eluded me.

I tried just moving the drive with no preparation. No dice. The PC rebooted itself itself and never entered Windows Vista. Upon next startup, it said the previous startup was unsuccessful and suggested doing a "System Recovery", by booting to the Vista Install DVD. I tried this, but Vista, in the end, reported that repairs had failed.

Then I tried the old trick of booting to the "old" motherboard and uninstalling the (Intel ICH5) hard drive controller. Moving the disk back to the "new" motherboard, it again failed to boot.

I also attempted to start in "Safe Mode", but that fails in the same way.

Finally, I tried "adding drivers" for the ICH8R IDE controller when doing the "System Recovery". Again, no luck.

Anybody know how to do this, if, indeed, it can even be done?

Thanks,
RebateMonger

Edit:
It appears the problem is solved. The simple answer is the same as for XP: Change the IDE controller driver to a basic PCI IDE controller, move the motherboard, and watch Vista SP1 populate the missing device drivers by itself.

 

[dclive]

You say it kept rebooting itself. If you turn off autoreboot, do you get a BSOD? If so, what is the error? Inaccessible boot device, or ACPI issues? That will tell you the next step.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: dclive
You say it kept rebooting itself. If you turn off autoreboot, do you get a BSOD? If so, what is the error? Inaccessible boot device, or ACPI issues? That will tell you the next step.

At four in the morning, it's easy to overlook things. I did an "F8" during an attempted startup and turned off auto rebooting from the menu.

"A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to protect your computer from damage.."

No specific error mentioned.

Stop 0x0000007B (0x80399BB0, 0xc0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

I believe the 0x0000007B error means "inaccessable_boot_device".

Microsoft:
"Stop: 0x0000007B" error message indicates that Windows Vista or Windows Vista Setup cannot access the hard disk that contains the Windows Vista startup files. Typically, this Stop error occurs when Windows Vista cannot locate a compatible driver for the disk controller device. For example, this Stop error can occur if Windows Vista cannot locate a compatible driver for a RAID controller.

As noted, I attempted to offer Vista a driver for the ICH8R controller, but I'm not 100% sure WHICH driver to offer. The FoxConn driver CD offers dozens of controller drivers. I think I'll hit Intel for the "generic" ICH8R controller driver, instead of trying to figure it out from the FoxConn CD.

Edit: Now I'm not sure if I should feed it the Intel uaachi, the iastor, or some other driver, since I'm not using any SATA drives or RAID capabilities, only single-drive IDE. After reading the .inf files, it appears that iiachi must be installed and, maybe, iastor. If those don't work, then I guess it'd be just the plain old Intel IDE drivers for my chipset.

 

[dclive]

Under XP you'd change it to generic PCI IDE controller (since almost anything boots with that) and that would render the system bootable (then you'd *immediately* shut down the system while attached to source hardware, then move to destination hardware, and it should be fully bootable). Sorry I'm not on a Vista system now or I'd take a look.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: dclive
Sorry I'm not on a Vista system now or I'd take a look.

I appreciate your help.

Darned, these Vista "repairs" take a LOT longer than just re-installing the OS.

Edit:
OK, it looks like the problem is solved. As dclive mentioned, REPLACING the fancy IDE controller driver with a generic PCI IDE controller driver will let the new motherboard boot. I had zero luck with the "System Recovery" option of installing drivers. Actually, since the System Recovery view was able to see the hard drive all along, I don't know why Vista couldn't see it.

Using the OLD motherboard, I replaced the driver for the IDE controller with the basic Intel PCI IDE controller. Then I booted to the new motherboard. It took a while, but Vista pretty much picked up all the devices on the new motherboard.

 

[RebateMonger]

After getting everything working, I noticed that the mouse cursor was slow, as were some disk operations. Viewing the Vista System log revealed a continual Event ID 11, ATAPI Controller Error, ever since the hard drive was transferred to the new motherboard.

I ran Seagate's (the drive maker's) diagnostics and the drive/cable/controller pass both Short and Long read tests with flying colors.

I tried switching connectors, but didn't try a new IDE cable (big mistake). That cable had JUST come from the "old" motherboard, so I felt it was likely good.

I also tired connecting the drive to one of my SATA ports using an old Abit Seriellel IDE-To-SATA connector. The motherboard wouldn't go beyond the initial startup screen. Apparently there were issues with the Seriellel 1 and SATA controllersICH5 and higher.

In desperation, I swapped IDE cables. The IDE errors disappeared and Vista become quickly responsive like it should.

Then I noticed that the cable, made for Dell in 2004, was a forty-conductor cable! It was probably hooked up the the CD-ROM on the old motherboard, and not to the hard drive. Replacing it with an 80-conductor cable instantly stopped the errors.

Now I REALLY feel dumb.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Actually, since the System Recovery view was able to see the hard drive all along, I don't know why Vista couldn't see it.

..because when you boot Vista, it uses the currently selected HDD controller, and does not start the machine with the Standard IDE controller (which the System Recovery set/DVD will do).

Using the OLD motherboard, I replaced the driver for the IDE controller with the basic Intel PCI IDE controller. Then I booted to the new motherboard. It took a while, but Vista pretty much picked up all the devices on the new motherboard.[/b]

Yep. Cool.