Can i change motherboard & cpu without re.installing windows?


Recommended Posts

but some installed program might be DRM tied with CPU & Motherboard serial numbers (such as Office 2013), so ...

Good point but I have office, (a crazy expensive suite I had to buy additionally) didn't have a problem with it with the new hardware....

trial and error then :p

Mostly...

I can only speak for myself, maybe I just got lucky, (who knows) but all I had was a restart in safe mode, let windows start, restart, it went to windows update, did some other stuff, and I'm still using it. (although it's time to upgrade again for me)

done it many times on vista, 7, server 2008, 2008 R2 and few times on 8 and server 2012, it works.

better then spending few weeks reinstalling apps.

basically what I do is, before chaning the board I uninstall all drivers, especially for video, storage controllers, motherboard, what I can't uninstall in add/remove programs I uninstall though device manager.

shut down, switch the board/cpu and reboot.

I have done it before. it will be hit or miss if it works...if windows could find all the drivers to make it run but before you do anything somehow backup the hard drive before you try! Just in case windows says nope! ain't going to happen! and crashes. :woot: btw are you changing board and cpu with the same thing? If so no probs but ottherwise good luck

I wouldn't really recommend it to be honest. Whilst Windows can reconfigure itself for new hardware profiles, I have tended to find it still leaves the OS somewhat crash prone and unstable, even if you uninstall all your drivers first.

In the xp days that would cause a blue screen. I have not changed a system completely with a windows 7 install, so I can't say for certain. I can tell you that by running sysprep it will take all of the hardware settings out and require you to re-enter your key, which will cause a reactivation. Running sysprep will not require you to reinstall windows entirely (this is how to properly image windows onto another computer with all of your software and settings in tact)

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • I and many others did not vote to get out of the E.u because of Putin or Farage, we did so for our own reasons. You don't have to tel me what my own did or did not do when it comes to the E.U. The EEC is or was the European Economic Community, a different beast to what the E.U is now.The EEC was a mainly about trading, the E.U have gone far beyond that and as I have said before, is now more of a United States of Europe. The U.K did not vote to join a United States of Europe. Anyway, they did not want us in there in the first place, Charles de Gaulle stopped us joining as he claimed we didn’t agree with the core ideas of integration. He was not wrong and that is why we voted out of the E.U when the time came. I was not old enough to vote the first time. My only regret is that we did not have the referendum years ago and got out years ago. If we rejoined, we would have to agree to join the Euro and no doubt Schengen, agree with freedom of movement, we have enough problem with people coming over here as it is. i have no problem with people coming over here if they work and don't try to push their way of life onto us. The E.U has a currency, freedom of movement, an anthem a flag, a parliament, well they are there, not sure if they do anything. Don't sound like something that is just for trading. Oh yeah, also wanted a euro Army. How many stupid rules have the E.U made that we had to follow? I doubt I will see the Uk rejoin the E.U, which suits me. Oh yeah, my partner is Polish, she came over here before Poland joined the E.U and she got fed up of people just coming over here with ease, while she had to struggle. She is now a British citizen and have been for a fair few years
    • Hello, Paul. Thanks for the editorial. It was interesting. I'm going research more into the app and its concept. Of course, if you know me at all, you know that I'd say your articles needs some editing! I a;ways do, don't I? For instance, the article occasionally mentions a concept before defining it, e.g., relays.
    • Screamer is 50% off on Steam, making it £24.99 here in the UK: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2814990/Screamer/ You might remember the series from the mid 90s / early 2000s, this new game is also by Milestone who created the older games.
    • U.S. partially reverses Anthropic AI ban for Mythos but keeps Fable 5 off the market by Karthik Mudaliar Anthropic says that the U.S. government has finally allowed it to restore Claude Mythos 5. But of course, there's a catch. The rollout is again for a limited set of U.S. organizations that operate and defend critical infrastructure. The company announced this in a post on X (formerly Twitter). This does not mean that Anthropic's latest frontier models are back to normal availability. Fable 5, which was a tuned version of Mythos 5 for public release, remains unavailable. Anthropic said that it is still working with the government to expand Mythos 5 access and make Fable 5 available again, but there's no timeline. Reports from Bloomberg and Reuters say that this decision actually came through a letter from the U.S. Commerce Department. According to Reuters, this would allow more than 100 companies and institutions access to Mythos 5. Reuters also reported that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s letter removes the need for export licenses for approved companies’ non-US citizen employees, as well as Anthropic’s own non-US citizen employees, while restrictions remain for organizations outside the approved list. Anthropic isn't alone with this kind of controlled rollout. OpenAI's newest model family, GPT 5.6, was announced just yesterday, but isn't available for everyone yet. In its announcement, OpenAI also said that access to these models is initially limited to a select group of trusted partners and organizations, with broader access planned later this year. Both of these cases show that frontier AI launches are no longer just ordinary product releases and more like slow and vetted deployments shaped heavily by the U.S. government.
    • Sol, Terra, Luna - aren't those the names of failed crypto coins? 🤣🤣🤣
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      flexorcist earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Woland13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Woland13 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      495
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      226
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      154
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      75
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      71
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!