Reinstall Windows new motherboard

MR_MU53NDO · 9 May 2013 at 20:27

well after a year or so running on what £250 could buy me, i've found that a £40 Asus P5G41T-M LX doesn't actually go that far, and nor does an old core 2 quad Q6600, so i've decided to finally buy a decent motherboard and cpu.

The only thing is, i don't want to have to reinstall the whole of Windows 7, CS5 and 3ds max 2012 and 2009, along with all the other programmes. Since i'm swapping to AMD, because i simply don't have enough money (being a student) to buy intel at the moment, and the only difference is that AMD is made of silicon, and intel is made of expensive aluminium, the new parts will be completely different, so do i have to reinstall all my programs when i buy the new parts, or can i just boot straight from my primary hard drive, and download the AMD drivers from there?

I don't really care too much about unused old intel drivers (unless they screw things up completely), and i should (correct me if i'm wrong) be able to remove them.

wazza300 · 9 May 2013 at 20:37

you should be fine,win7 usually sorts itself out without a reinsatall

MR_MU53NDO · 9 May 2013 at 20:39

wazza300 said:
you should be fine,win7 usually sorts itself out without a reinsatall

phew! what a relief!

Tonester0011 · 9 May 2013 at 20:44

Everytime i put in a new mobo i just have to enter my product key. It then pretends not to know what it is so i have to go through the automated phone call....ergh, no reinstall required though.

wazza300 · 9 May 2013 at 20:45

Tonester0011 said:
Everytime i put in a new mobo i just have to enter my product key. It then pretends not to know what it is so i have to go through the automated phone call....ergh, no reinstall required though.

yeah that's right because it detects new hardware so you have to re register windows again

anthony566 · 9 May 2013 at 20:53

A few reboots and updates should sort it out ...

varkanoid · 10 May 2013 at 14:33

If you are going from intel chipset to intel chipset you shouldnt have a problem. Intel to AMD chipset not so sure not had the experience.

Back in the day it was when going from nvidia chipset to intel or SIS to Intel when you often had problems booting windows.

The Dirts · 10 May 2013 at 19:17

When I did my last one I just went to the drivers page and replaced things like SATA network drivers, etc, to standard or generic that came with windows.
Then swapped the boards and let windows do it's thing.

I had no issues with either upgrade, (one was AMD 939 nvidia2 to intel 775 with intel P45). Saves a lot of time not reinstalling everything.

Shawy · 10 May 2013 at 21:10

wazza300 said:
yeah that's right because it detects new hardware so you have to re register windows again

It gets annoying when you only upgrade your RAM and windows can't sort it out online, and you have to go through the automated phone system to get your wallpaper back.

I'm going through a similar change myself, only from AMD to Intel at the end of the month. From what I've gathered so far I should be fine just moving my SSD over, but for quicker boot times etc. would it be better to install windows and everything else on a clean disk? Or will it make no difference?

PCZ · 11 May 2013 at 11:31

W7 is generally very good at sorting itself out if you change MB's.

However one thing that will cause you a headache is the wrong IDE mode.

Older systems generally had IDE legacy mode as default, new boards are likely to be set to AHCI.

You can set the same mode on the new board and W7 will boot up Ok.

If you decide to change over to AHCI then that can be done by a reg edit without a re install.