General upgrade - do I need to do anything specific?

ebis · 1 Jul 2011 at 13:56

Hi,

I am going to upgrade my CPU/MB/RAM.

Do I need to do anything specific on the software side for this?

I will remove my realtek drivers before hand but I think that is all i need to do?

IPAddis · 1 Jul 2011 at 14:00

You MAY and probably SHOULD reinstall the entire OS. That said, it MAY work just fine.

YMMV

ebis · 1 Jul 2011 at 14:10

Hmm I was hoping to avoid this as I don't have my disk anymore :S

wilko49 · 1 Jul 2011 at 14:15

If you still have the licence key, maybe you could borrow the disk off of someone?

You will almost certainly need to reinstall the OS if the new motherboard has a different chipset.

ebis · 1 Jul 2011 at 15:18

Looking at Microsoft it seems I can do this without the key:

You can reinstall Windows 7 using Recovery in Control Panel, under Advanced recovery methods. This method reinstalls Windows 7, either from a recovery image provided by your computer manufacturer, or from your original Windows 7 installation files. You need to reinstall all of the programs that you added, and restore all of your files from a backup. For more information, see Choosing an advanced recovery method.

Will this be sufficient or is it a full reformat that I need?