Swapping a motherboard

[bonanza2000]

I am thinking of swapping out a motherboard from one manufacture to another, and keeping the cpu, RAM, and hard drives.

so my question is how much of a pain in the butt is it and what are my chances that the new motherboard doesn't have a cow with whatever drivers are already on the hard drives and how do I do it to make sure it doesn't have a cow.

:-)

[Eldonko]

It is possible but I dont recommend it. You will have to uninstall drivers/utils and reinstall new ones which can always lead to issues and Windows will probably make you reactivate anyway so I would just do a clean install.

[Perineum]

I've had to do this many times. IE: dead motherboard, or client wants to keep old data.

If the OS is Win 7, it's very easy.

Uninstall all motherboard related software, attach HD to new motherboard and let it boot up. The HAL in Windows 7 will do the rest. My own system has been through this many times and it's always worked without issue.

Win XP usually requires a repair install over top the old install for it to work.

[bonanza2000]

Perineum - you are giving me some hope. Yes it is win 7 pro. This computer has an m-ITX ASRock board and I think it might be a little flakey. It keeps dropping the internet connection and none of the other clients are doing it. Not sure what is really going on but it is annoying. The clients with Gigabyte boards are not having any issues and they are all configured the same with similiar hardware (except for the motherboard)

[Perineum]

Well swapping out the motherboard should be easy, but probably easier to just toss in another ethernet card.

[wirerogue]

if it's the same chipset, it should be a breeze.

it it's not, not so much. there's alot going on with the HAL at the time of the install that is not necessarily duplicated by the windows hardware wizard.

that aside, go for it. let us know what happens.

[UNTAMED]

you could also try this
Windows 7 Installation - Transfer to a New Computer - Windows 7 Forums

[MARSTG]

and assuming the thermal paste is still ok, if it is solidified will be difficult. that is if you have an AMD cpu, last time I tried this I bent some pins. If you have Intel you should be ok

[Lpfan4ever]

Originally Posted by MARSTG

and assuming the thermal paste is still ok, if it is solidified will be difficult. that is if you have an AMD cpu, last time I tried this I bent some pins. If you have Intel you should be ok

Best way to avoid that is just just run some stress tests for a while to heat the paste up, then shut it down and pop the HSF off before it cools. Wiggling left/right also helps a lot.

But as said, Windows 7 is good for this sort of stuff. I went from an E8600 Intel rig to an AMD x6 1100T with no more work than a reboot.

[Dzzope]

As everyone has said already.. you should be fine swapping boards.

If it's only the net dropping and nothing else, wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to try a seperate NIC?