Replacing a mobo with Vista - format required?

[AntiFreze]

So my mb got fried so i bought a new one (different chipset, ECS AM2 to am ASRock AM2+). I would love to just plug everything into it, will this work? Or am I going to have to reinstall the OS?

 

[kalrith]

I would recommend reinstalling the OS. You already have lots of drivers from the other motherboard and chipset, and that will cause your performance to suffer with the new mobo. If it were any piece of hardware besides the mobo, then you'd be fine without a reinstall.

 

[corkyg]

Most of the time if the chipset is different, any attempt to use the old OS HDD will result in a BSOD. My choice would be to get a new HDD, and install the new OS. Then access the old HDD in an external case or as a second drive to preserve your data files. You can delete the old OS.

 

[tcsenter]

Cross post.

 

[zerocool84]

Some people have successfully been able to uninstall the old mobo chipset drivers and maybe you could try that but I'd recommend a fresh format/install.

 

[Engineer]

You might run Sysprep on the OS and then switch to the new board. That should take the current Vista back to basic, no driver level and then it will detect and install drivers when it boots on the new board.

Sysprep primer for Vista...

 

[JackMDS]

There is No universal rule.

Some times it simply works. If the combination new Mobo chipset can self correct to read the HD past the initial boot you might have few ghosts in the device manager but it is possible to correct it.

Otherwise if you have two cpmputers that are Networked there is away that insure 98% success.

I put the hard drive in an other computer as an addtional data drive and back it up with Acronis Echo, to a space on the second computer.

Then fix the old computer, and put the HD back in, and try to boot as is.

If it does not work I boot with Acronis Echo for workstation CD, and ghost back the backup using the Universal option of Echo.

The Universal option automatically strips the Old drivers and install working drivers.

There might be some ghosts that need to be repaired but in 98% of time the old drive with all the application and data would be working again as before on the repaired computer.

Why I use this method?

Putting aside the time that it takes to Fix the hardware (since it is the same No matter what) the above method takes an hour (a little more if the HD is loaded with hundreds of GB) and I am back to where I was.

Fresh Install, rebuilt the applications, and data pool, and every thing else on my system, can take me two days.

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