Motherboard swap without reinstalling Windows?

[cncb]

I am considering getting one of the new low-power Zacate motherboards with integrated CPU to swap out the core i3 CPU and motherboard currently in my server. Everything is working very well at the moment so I was wondering if it is feasible to swap out the motherboard without having to reinstall Windows 7 and everything else. I will be using the same hard drives and have no internal cards. Has anyone tried this? Thanks.

[crusing]

Download all of the device drivers for your new hardware in advance and have them ready on the hard drive. Then remove all of the devices from the device manager before shutting down the computer for the Motherboard swap. That will usually ensure a smooth detection of the new hardware. Good luck.

[jhkoenig]

I've swapped motherboards without blood loss. When I rebooted, I put the Windows CD in the drive and did a REPAIR and everything was fine. Took about an hour.

Good luck!

[jptheripper]

vote #2 for the repair option. Have all the drivers ready to go in multiple places (usb drive, on the c: drive, etc..) swap the hardware and go.

of course, image your drive first, so if it doesnt work, you can flash right backto a working state.

[stevech]

does the "repair" work OK if that DVD is an older version of Windows than is installed on the hard disk?

[rrhorer]

Originally Posted by stevech

does the "repair" work OK if that DVD is an older version of Windows than is installed on the hard disk?

May not be a good idea. You may be better off doing the following:

1. Image your current configuration.
2. Get the new drivers lined up and uninstall everything as instructed above.
3. Swap out the motherboard.
4. Restart Windows and let it work away, finding new hardware, complaining, etc.
5. Give it time and a number of restarts and it may resolve the new hardaware issues.
6. You will be required to re-authenticate Windows because a motherboard change is too significant (OEM Windows product may be out of luck).

[scat]

I have used this method many times successfully for Windows XP.

But as suggested do a full image of the system prior to this.

link: http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/8...herboards.html

Scat

[matt91]

I know we have this discussion on a quarterly basis, but can folks remind me which imaging software they like?

I've had only mixed results in the past, but willing to trying something again.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by matt91

I know we have this discussion on a quarterly basis, but can folks remind me which imaging software they like?

I've had only mixed results in the past, but willing to trying something again.

I use (and love) Acronis True Image, and it's pretty inexpensive. Davephan also recommends Clonezilla, which is open source and even less expensive.

[JerryB]

I've had good luck with ShadowProtect.

[Savage1701]

Originally Posted by matt91

I know we have this discussion on a quarterly basis, but can folks remind me which imaging software they like?

I've had only mixed results in the past, but willing to trying something again.

I'll probably be the only one who says this, but Norton Ghost has yet to let me down in a CD-ROM boot environment. I have had mixed results installing it as a boot-into-environment on a hard drive, and obviously if the hard drive itself has crashed then that feature is worthless.

I have used it on XP, Vista, 64-bit XP, and 64-bit Win 7. I would not touch Symantec for anything else, but Ghost works well for me. I've also used it with situations where the boot drive is off a RAID controller and over a network in one case. It allows easy driver install in the CD-ROM boot environment to "see" the backups on RAID controllers, etc.

I also use it to frequently file-copy-backup my Wizard and Properties files. Ghost 14 is pretty granular for that sort of thing.

I know Acronis is popular, and I use it as a secondary backup program, but personally I've never had good luck with it, and their forum/support is pretty terrible.

[Savage1701]

Originally Posted by cncb

I am considering getting one of the new low-power Zacate motherboards with integrated CPU to swap out the core i3 CPU and motherboard currently in my server. Everything is working very well at the moment so I was wondering if it is feasible to swap out the motherboard without having to reinstall Windows 7 and everything else. I will be using the same hard drives and have no internal cards. Has anyone tried this? Thanks.

Yes, like others I've done this. I've just made sure I have all the drivers for the new board handy. I don't know what integrated CPU your board would have, but those could be the only funky thing to deal with - it can be a little tricky to "force" Intel chipset driver updates, for example, but it can be done and I've done it without trashing out the original OS.

I don't know what type of CPU your board has, so I suppose you could encounter something weird there with the chipset drivers and such. But, you might actually come out ahead since many times moving the hard drive won't cause the OS won't see this as a "reactivation" issue if you are using an OEM version of your OS.

Heck, ghost your drive and give it a try. Worst case you put the drive back into the i3 system and restore from your image.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by matt91

I know we have this discussion on a quarterly basis, but can folks remind me which imaging software they like?

I had a pretty good experience with DriveImage XML recently. It's free for personal (i.e. non-commercial) use, and covers the basics pretty well. On the downside, you need to home-brew your own boot CD using BartPE or UBCD.

My problem with commerical products like Acronis or Ghost is that the low-cost home versions refuse to run on disks with a server OS installed. They expect you to shell out $500-$1000 for a server-enabled version of what is essentially the same product. Sorry, not going to happen.

[Tiki]

My advice is to just do a clean install. I tired swapping out a motherboard a few years ago with Win XP. The new motherboard had the exact same chipset and CPU (but was med by a different manufacturer), so it should have been a cakewalk, but it was still a disaster for me. I still had to do the Windows repair thing and re-install my video card and all my capture cards. After several days of screwing around and emailing Microsoft tech support (they had me download a bunch of registry patches), I eventually got it working. But, it would have been faster and easier to just do a clean install.

[texneus]

I have personally used the procedure here to swap two completely different motherboards (original was Intel Based, new was AMD) when running Vista. Read carefully!

http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news...ng-windows.ars

The key is to uninstall all device drivers (including integrated devices on the MB) and go back to generic windows drivers for everything. The new board ran for about two years without issue before I junked the system and installed Win 7 over the winter.

FYI: You will be required to reactivate windows after the swap.

[rrhorer]

Originally Posted by matt91

I know we have this discussion on a quarterly basis, but can folks remind me which imaging software they like?

If you have a Seagate HD or Maxtor (now Seagate), you can download and use DiskWizard free (http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...ads/discwizard). It is actually a version of Acronis True Image and works very well. The HD can even be attached via USB.