Reinstall required for new motherboard?

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Hello, my current motherboard is dead and i have a replacement on the way tomorrow. What will happen once i plug in the new motherboard and boot? Will the computer throw a complete wobbly and not run?

I can't do a fresh install as i still need to back up various bits still on the C drive, and i'd rather not do one at all, as it's a right pain in the bum. I've read somewhere that i could do a repair install after i've booted, would this be viable?
 
I don't recall ever having a PC not boot after changing the motherboard. It may throw various wobblies at you, but you should be able to install new drivers.
 
Depends on the chipset. If its the same, i.e. Intel to Intel, it should be fine but if its different you may need to carry out a Windows repair.
 
If its a like for like swap then you should be fine, however going to different chipsets as you are it will probably throw a wobbler. If it does it can probably be sorted doing a repair, never tried doing it, I just start a fresh to make sure there will be nothing hanging around in the system that can cause any problems.
 
Could you even boot into windows?

Nope - it was Windows 7, so I assumed it could handle it, albeit forcing me to reinstall every driver. But it wouldn't even boot, lots of errors, no chance of recovery without reinstalling!
 
Doesn't work with W7 - i can confirm that too. Recently had a new motherboard for a W7 pc for the Mrs. Windows wouldnt boot, it tried repairing itself and restoring to an earlier point - but zilch :(
Had to do a full reinstall - didn't take long but was a minor inconveinience.
 
With the pretty wording microsoft gave it it makes it seem as if you cna just swap the motherboard and not have to do any kind of recovery etc and it would be fine
 
I went from a 939 setup to a 775 setup. I reinstalled everything from scratch on a new drive.

However i accidentally booted off the wrong drive after a reboot and it went into windows fine, exactly how it was before. Can't have been a good though, it must have had all the wrong drivers for chipset etc

Just backup everything you need and format then reinstall
 
It's alive! Surprisingly it booted absolutely fine, hasn't really thrown up any problems, apart from having to reinstall audio drivers it's working perfectly. Hoorah, thanks for the advice guys. I'll most likely do a full on reinstall in the near future. Haven't got around to overclocking yet, not sure if i understand the whole ram divider thing. On my old board the ram and cpu fsb were separate so i could alter the cpu speed without worrying about the ram. Will have to do some looking into it.
 
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I still have my gigabyte utilities installed from my last mobo lol.

FSB x cpu multiplier = cpu clockspeed


where DRAM divider is represented as X:Y
X/Y=dram multiplier (eg 2:1 dram divider = RAM multiplier of 2 x FSB=RAM speed)

Keep in mind that Dual Data Rate (DDR) runs at trwice the speed set in BIOS, so DDR2 800MHz would be 400MHz in BIOS
 
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