Changing motherboards without reformatting windows...

[Richdog]

This may (will) sound like an incredibly stupid question, but in all m time of PC buildng i've had it drilled into me that when changing motherboards, you need to reformat for best results. As I am soon intending to go with the NV 680 chipset I am just wondering... to save the supreme hassle of having top re-install all my apps and games, can I swap motherboards without reformatting (ie: just uninstall mobo drivers, install new mobo then re-install new mobo) and expect trouble-free computing afterwards?

What method do people here use?

 

[Cob]

A fresh install is always best when changing chipsets.

Simply uninstalling the drivers may work fine, but it's likely to cause problems some way down the line.

 

[oldbag]

Strangely enough, the last time I did this I had a dual boot machine. Windows 98 picked up all the new hardware and worked fine however 2000 died miserably.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Best to do a re-install, that way you get zero problems.

 

[Richdog]

A fresh install is always best when changing chipsets.

Simply uninstalling the drivers may work fine, but it's likely to cause problems some way down the line.

Best to do a re-install, that way you get zero problems.

Yeah that's what i've always been brought up to believe... it's just after 10+ years of upgrading i'm kind of getting sick of reformatting and re-installing every bloody app and game every time I change. *sigh*

Oh well, reformat it is then...

 

[Mitch007]

I thought XP was OK with mobo change and no re-install.

I've upgraded with sis chipset over the past years afraid of doing a new install with a different chipset

 

[easyrider]

I would reformat.

It only leads to more time wasted when you have to uninstall drivers and get further problems down the line.

I always format and just install programs and games etc..as and when I need them.

Favourites and outlook emails etc.. are all backed up and my data is always on a seperate partition.For speed of getting things back to the way they were.


Easyrider

 

[MeddlE]

I've managed it successfully on a 2000 install before, just a case of uninstalling all the drivers and turning off the machine, swap the hardware then power-up. Detects new hardware found.

 

[james.miller]

i've never reformatted. Just installed window fresh, deleting the windows directory along the way

 

[ethan]

done it moving from nv3 to nv4 with no probs

 

[Yellowbeard]

Favourites and outlook emails etc.. are all backed up and my data is always on a seperate partition.For speed of getting things back to the way they were.


Easyrider

The Files and Settings Transfer Wizard is very handy for this if you don't have an existing back up like easyrider.

 

[Flanno]

It only ever worked for me when moving from a Bad Axe to a Bad Axe 2. I didn't even need to restart windows as it did not pick up any new hardware !! (I had the nic and audio disabled which as far as I know are the only differences in actual hardware). However a week later I swapped out my video card to help a friend troubleshoot and ended up having to reactivate my copy of Media Center !! So you are probably better off doing a fresh install.

 

[Richdog]

Yeah I always back up all the essentials like favourites, save games etc (been doing it a loong time), and I have all my essential programs and utilities saved etc for re-installing, I am just getting tired of reinstalling everything whenever I upgrade, I seem to have lost the will for it in the last couple of years, so much hassle.

 

[Coolasmoo]

Worked fine for me going from intel 975 to Nvidia 680i

Although since then i have formatted anyway

 

[Dangerman3]

my friend did it with XP pro and it worked fine for a bot then he told me it just went crazy after a while so yes a fresh install is best

 

[beast]

I had to reformat as when I went from single to conroe it didn't see the second processor.

 

[Biggles 266]

Reformating when changing boards is not necessary. The only thing you have to be wary of is chipset drivers, and ppssibly controller drivers. Read this.

You'll often find that moving between chipsets from the same company works ok, i.e. nF3 to nF4. But Intel to nF5 will kill the install.

As for not seeing extra cores, a repair install of Windows would fix that as it would load the SMP aware HAL. And away you go.

 

[IT Troll]

The technique works a treat. I went from an ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 (ULi chipset) with an AMD Opteron to a DFI Infinity 975X/G (Intel chipset) with a Core 2 Duo.

The key steps are first ensuring you have a standard disk controller driver and have removed any chipset drivers, then after the transfer cleaning up any left overs in device manager.

When switching from single to multi core you can simple update your Processor driver (HAL) from within Device Manager.

At work I have created one master disk image that we use to clone all our desktop and laptop PCs which covers a very wide range of chipsets and hardware devices.

 

[Yellowbeard]

IMO, a proper backup beforehand, + Files and Settings Transfer Wizard + XP/SP2 slipstream will take only a little more time than doing all this manual driver cleanup. So, yes, you "can" change MOBOs without reinstalling but, there is no way anyone outside of Microsoft (and probably not even them) can tell you EVERY single ramification of changeover install vs clean install. However, a clean install is guaranteed to work if all else works fine but, I'm conservative about things like this.

 

[silversurfer]

I switched from socket a to 754 to 775 and there was no reinstall needed. Im sure I had problems in that past that at least required a windows repair job from the cd but that time nothing was needed.