hardware upgrade consequences to software

[Sul]

Hi,

I'm just wondering how to go about a mobo, processor, gfx card, RAM upgrade..

I am basically swapping out these components for better ones and building another system with the old ones.

My concern is - how will the software adapt to these components? At the moment I'm assuming I will have to uninstall drivers for all the hardware that's coming out, then shut down, put in new hardware and boot and install new drivers.. am I correct?

Thanks, any help/advice will be appreciated.

 

[Will_3rd]

Looks like you've got it worked out.

 

[Rroff]

Often you can get away with simply plugging in the new hardware - fire up and install new drivers - uninstalling the old drivers first can help to keep things a little cleaner - but in theory windows is designed to handle multiple driver files fine... sometimes you can get incompatibility issues between drivers however so to be completely sure a clean install of the OS would be needed but imo its not essential...

One thing to keep in mind - if you have an OEM copy of windows you will need to purchase a new liscense if you do any major hardware change and also some software locks itself to your hardware ID (sometimes DRM, etc.) so you would have to reinstall/re-auth that software before you could run it again...

 

[Dravic]

If you're swapping out the mobo you often have to reinstall windows, especially if the new mobo has a different chipset. You might get lucky by uninstalling the chipset drivers but if not you'll have to reinstall windows.