Windows 8 Major Fail

[XRays]

Did a nice clean fresh install of Windows 8 on my i7 machine with a Samsung 830 SSD in a removable bay and a Radeon HD 7970. Everything worked well. Had to change the video card to a Radeon HD 5870 as the 7970 had to be used on a different computer. Under no circumstance would Windows 8 finish booting after the switch. It would stall at a silhouette of the Windows logo. I could get it into recovery mode and it could never fix it. Had to use the refresh option to wipe out everything. Yet, on the same computer with a different removable internal boot drive running Windows 7 Pro it had no problem adjusting to the new card. This was strictly a problem with the Windows 8 installation and an inability to handle a common hardware change.

Very very lame. My Mac runs Windows better than a PC!

 

[Nothinman]

Windows has always had issues like that, this isn't anything new to Win8. Virtually every OS out there deals with hardware changes better than Windows, there's nothing new to see here.

 

[zerogear]

Where on the other hand, I've done completely motherboard swaps along with video card, with absolutely no issues on Windows 7 and 8. YMMV I guess. I tend to uninstall the drivers of the part I am swapping first, so that helps, usually it's crappy manufacturer drivers that gets in the way.

 

[ControlD]

Live and learn I guess. I think most people that have dealt with swapping video cards learn at some point what the proper procedure is with Windows. Uninstall the current drivers, switch to the default VGA driver and then do the swap. Now the OP knows too!

Wouldn't it have been easier to reswap cards long enough to remove the driver rather than wiping the system and starting from scratch??

 

[uallas5]

Safe Mode - Uninstall Video Drivers - Reboot - Install New video drivers

SOP to fix video driver problems since win95

 

[smakme7757]

^
Last two post are words of wisdom

 

[zokudu]

Isn't the 5000 series on the legacy driver now? That may explain the driver issues everyone is alluding to here.

 

[ViRGE]

Isn't the 5000 series on the legacy driver now? That may explain the driver issues everyone is alluding to here.

No, that would be the 2000-4000 series that are legacy.

I would have expected a 7000 to 5000 swap to go fine, but to be fair downgrading on Windows has always been more finicky than upgrading.

 

[XRays]

Thanks for the advice of what to do before changing video cards!

Never had this problem before, including running Windows 7 on the very same machine with the same switch. I must be spoiled by the Mac OS - besides the ease of changing video cards, I can clone a boot drive from my Mac Pro and use it to boot from any Mac, whether a Mini or Laptop, or vice versa, without any issues. Windows 8 is, in some situations, not very robust. I could not even boot into Safe Mode at all, which is very serious.

 

[Nothinman]

Thanks for the advice of what to do before changing video cards!

Never had this problem before, including running Windows 7 on the very same machine with the same switch. I must be spoiled by the Mac OS - besides the ease of changing video cards, I can clone a boot drive from my Mac Pro and use it to boot from any Mac, whether a Mini or Laptop, or vice versa, without any issues. Windows 8 is, in some situations, not very robust. I could not even boot into Safe Mode at all, which is very serious.

Windows drivers have always assumed they were the only one on the system and that you were never going to replace them. At least that's what it seems like. I moved my previous Linux installation at from machine to machine at least 3 times between disparate hardware and architectures before finally doing a reinstall so I could have a full 64-bit install and every time went with very few problems, not even close to any that required a reinstall.

 

[Kristijonas]

If nobody else suggested this yet, the first thing you should do, when changing graphical cards, is clean install. Delete the old driver with any related software COMPLETELY. Then install the new hardware with the new gpu inserted.